


Beacon in the Darkness

by servantofclio



Series: Sewers to Stars [20]
Category: Mass Effect, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-02
Updated: 2014-09-22
Packaged: 2018-02-11 09:58:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 33,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2063787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/servantofclio/pseuds/servantofclio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kasumi already thinks Shepard knows the most interesting people, but a mission to Reaper-occupied Earth shows her that's more true than she thought.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Lots of thanks to theherocomplex and probablylostrightnow for encouragement and help thinking through certain parts of the story.

Working on the Crucible project is interesting. Kasumi’s neither a scientist nor an engineer; her role on the Crucible team is perhaps best described as “acquisitions.” The Crucible team needs a lot of specialized equipment, and no one is too particular about how she acquires it. Schematics, equipment, prototype tech, antiquities; she can go after it all, each its own unique challenge. It’s the sort of thing that appeals to her adventure-loving heart, and it’s nice to feel like she’s contributing to the cause without being on the front lines.

 

Her work gets a lot more interesting the day that Shepard calls and asks to meet her on the Citadel. It’s easy enough to arrange to meet her at a noodle shop on Zakera Ward. “I need a favor,” Shepard says, over bowls full of noodles and cups of green tea, “but you can say no.”

 

“Not going to say yes or no right off,” Kasumi says, idly wondering how long the proprietor’s supply of real tea will last. “What’s the favor, Shep?”

 

Shepard takes a sip from her cup and sets it down. “I need someone to retrieve something from Earth.”

 

Kasumi’s eyebrows go up. “Earth? That’s a tall order.” She has a little ship, but Reaper presence in the Sol system is heavier than her usual haunts.

 

Shepard makes a face. “I know. There’s a vessel available that can get someone in and out, but it’s tiny, and the situation on the ground is unpredictable. I need someone who can improvise and adapt, someone smart and skilled at intrusion and stealth.”

 

Kasumi leans forward, lacing her fingers together. “Now you’re flattering me, Shep.”

 

Shepard grins. “Is it working?”

 

Kasumi grins back. “Well, you’ve got my attention. Tell me more.”

 

Shepard nods. “We’ve become aware of a Prothean artifact that may be a missing piece for our project.” Kasumi nods as she takes that in; she doesn’t have a handle on all the details, but she knows there’s something missing from the Crucible plans. Stands to reason some other Prothean device might hold the key. Shepard continues, “Last we knew, it was in the private collection of wealthy human. We think it’s in a building he owns in New York City.”

 

“It’s a big city,” Kasumi says cautiously. “I might need a bit more to go on.”

 

“I’m in communication with a team on the ground,” Shepard says. “I need you to rendezvous with them. They might be able to retrieve the artifact themselves, but they can’t get it off-planet.”

 

Kasumi nods. “And how am I getting in and out of Reaper-infested space?”

 

Shepard smiles, pushing a datapad across the table. “You’re going to like this one.”

 

On the pad are pics and plans of a tiny scout vessel. “It uses a modified version of the _Normandy_ ’s stealth drive,” Shepard explains.

 

Kasumi looks up. “It’s not going to cook me alive, right?” She remembers how hot the _Normandy_ can get when she’s running silent. She also remembers the Collector Base, which was the hottest she cares to get in her lifetime.

 

“It should be better than that. It’s intended for reconnaissance and scouting. Small crew, sophisticated VI to handle most of the systems. It’s a prototype, but fortunately for us it had been transferred from the Arcturus shipyards to the Citadel before the invasion.” Shepard’s face crimps briefly before she shakes her head. She looks weary, dark circles under her eyes, a tightness around her mouth, and a furrow in her forehead that seems to be on its way to becoming permanent.

 

Kasumi studies the datapad for one more moment. It looks like a sweet little ship, and the job piques her curiosity. “All right, Shep, you’ve got me.”

 

Shepard’s face clears for an instant into a real, relieved smile. “Thanks, Kasumi. I can’t think of anyone better for this.” She lifts her omni-tool to send a message. “I’m sending you coordinates; try to set down as close to them as you safely can. Your contact is April O’Neil.” She lowers her arm and leans forward. “Listen, Kasumi... about this team... they’re a little unusual.”

 

“That’s nothing new, around you,” Kasumi says with a smile.

 

“No, but... damn it.” Shepard’s omni-tool pings, insistently. She mutters a curse. “It’s the Council. I have to take this.”

 

“Go on,” says Kasumi, wishing she could do more to lighten the lines of strain on Shepard’s face. “I’ll just head down to the docking bay and check out this ride you got me.”

 

Shepard manages a half-hearted smile. “They know to expect you. You don’t have to sneak in.”

 

“Where’s the fun in that?” Kasumi asks. Shepard must have been confident that she’d do the mission, she notes, but she doesn’t mind.

 

“Call me before you leave and I’ll explain,” says Shepard, cryptically.

 

#

 

It’s a sweet little ship, indeed. The Alliance is calling it _Reconnaissance Vessel 1_ , because they’re boring. The beleaguered Alliance specialist staffing the dock nearly jumps out of his skin when Kasumi appears at his elbow—it was the principle of the thing, really, what was the point in going through regular channels and having her ID checked when she could circumvent it entirely? She lets the young specialist verify her identity, though, and takes a good look at her new vessel. It couldn’t carry more than a three-person crew, and that would be a tight fit; for just Kasumi, it’ll be fine, and it has a VI with a top-notch autopilot program. It’s already mostly equipped and supplied, and it takes surprisingly little time to find the additional items Kasumi requests. Not much time to transfer what personal possessions she needs from her own (docked and carefully secured) ship, either. She wonders just how many strings Shepard pulled to set this up. Then again, Shepard may not have to do more than ask to have any Alliance resource at her beck and call just now.

 

It would be a lovely ship to steal, though. It’s almost disappointing that she has official authorization to use it. It’ll need a new name, though. She’s not sure what. Something... pretty. Or subtle.

 

She calls Shepard, as asked, while the dock crew prepares the ship, but apparently she’s stuck in meetings with the Council or something, because she doesn’t answer. Kasumi waits for a response, but eventually the specialist calls her over and informs her that _RV1_ is ready to go, and she’s cleared to undock, so Kasumi shrugs and boards the ship. Whatever Shepard wanted to tell her, she’ll have to figure out on the ground, that’s all.

 

#

 

The transit to Earth is uneventful. Kasumi catches some sleep while the VI takes the ship on its quiet cruise to and from the mass relays. In her waking time, she goes over the files on April O’Neil she transferred before leaving the Citadel. Thirty-six-year old human female, lived in New York City most of her life; advanced degrees in psychology and neuroscience from NYU, a respectable scientific career. Not who Kasumi would expect to be involved in a heist, but fate takes people to strange places.

 

She’s cautious in the Arcturus system, though the Reapers seem to have moved on since reducing Arcturus station to rubble; she has the stealth systems engaged anyway, and shakes herself to alertness as they make the jump to Sol system. The Charon relay is out on the fringes of the solar system, a long, quiet flight from Earth itself. There’s not much of a view. The ship’s sensors, scanning the system, register Reaper signatures and precious little else. Kasumi fidgets in her seat as they draw near, leaning forward as if that’s going to give her a better view of the embattled planet. From space, it doesn’t look so different, really: It looks placid and tranquil, white and blue and green... until her passage takes her past the dark side of the planet and sees just how dark it is. Ugly red and orange patches bear witness to the ongoing destruction of several major cities, and the rest is just... dark, lacking the brilliance of artificial lights. Kasumi takes a deep breath to steady herself, her heart hammering in her chest. She feeds her coordinates into the VI and lets it take the lead, spiraling the ship down through the atmosphere with artificial precision to the island of Manhattan.

 

Her landing site turns out to be a playground, the swingset still intact, though the slide has collapsed, and there’s enough room on the basketball court to set down her little ship. This is the part where her instructions fade out; it’s up to her contacts to keep watch over the site, evidently. Kasumi slings her bag over her shoulder—she’s known how to pack light for years—readies herself to activate tactical cloak and draw weapons at a moment’s notice, and steps out of the cockpit.

 

It’s a cloudy night, but the moon breaks through, enough to show her that the surrounding area is dark, quiet, and desolate. Normally she’d expect to see people in the streets in a city this size, even at night, and she wonders just how sure Shepard is that her contacts are even still alive.

 

It doesn’t take long, though, before Kasumi’s eyes catch signs of movement, and a slim female figure emerges from one of the darkened buildings adjoining the playground. She beckons, and Kasumi approaches, but she keeps a grip on her pistol. The face that’s revealed when she gets close matches the one on the file, though, and she lets herself relax, just a little. “Dr. O’Neil, I presume,” she says lightly.

 

“Call me April,” says the other woman, offering her hand. “Shepard said you’d departed the Citadel. I’m glad you made it through; seems like it was in good time.”

 

Kasumi frowns at that, wondering at the ease of communication, but shakes April’s hand anyway, introducing herself. Her grip is firm and strong. She looks a bit thinner than her image, her cheeks a little drawn, but her eyes are sharp and alert. “It was an uneventful flight. Stealth systems worked as promised.”

 

“Good,” April says, glancing over Kasumi’s shoulder. Kasumi turns herself, tensing, but all she sees is her ship, moving slowly into the cover of the buildings, pulled by a line attached to a barely visible motorcycle. “We’re trying to get it out of sight,” April explains.

 

Kasumi nods. “Good plan.”

 

April gives her a crooked smile. “Your coming here doesn’t do anyone much good if you can’t get out again, after all. Let’s get inside.”

 

Inside the building—formerly a school or youth center, she’d guess—the windows are blacked out to hide the small amount of light within. April pulls off her own close-fitting dark hood to reveal red hair in a messy braid and sighs. “Welcome to Earth. Sorry not to have the place tidier.”

 

Kasumi smiles. “I’m not here to judge the housekeeping.”

 

“Good thing.” April folds her arms over her chest, her fingers tightening over her arm. “What did Shepard tell you?”

 

“I’m here for a Prothean device of some sort,” Kasumi says, taking in as much of the room as she can. One thing draws her attention immediately, but she decides to bide her time and see how they intend to play this. “Shepard said you might have acquired it by this time...?”

 

April blows out a breath. “No, we haven’t had a chance. The Reapers dropped in a lot of ground troops a couple days ago and we haven’t had the time. But we know where it is. We don’t know as much about the security systems as we’d like, but I gather that’s an area of expertise for you. We may also have to go through Reaper forces to get there.”

 

Kasumi frowns. “I’m going to need more detail than that. I’m not sure this is sounding like a one-person job, either.”

 

“It doesn’t have to be,” April says. “We have blueprints, and we can probably acquire most of the other resources you might need. We have personnel, too, varied skills in hacking, infiltration, and combat.”

 

Under her hood, Kasumi’s eyebrows go up. The other woman sounds confident; given that these people are Shepard’s friends, perhaps she should revise her expectations upward. “Really.”

 

“Yes.” April looks uncomfortable for a moment, a frown creasing her forehead. “Listen—”

 

The outer door opens, cutting her off, and a man comes in. “I think we got it out of sight, and the perimeter’s clear,” he reports.

 

“Good,” says April, but her posture doesn’t relax. “Kasumi, this is my associate, Casey Jones.”

 

The man guffaws as he comes into the light, and his gap-toothed grin is sunny and open. “ _Associate_ , she says. Thanks, Red, friends for twenty years and all I get is _associate_? Don’t take this spy stuff too seriously, now.”

 

April rolls her eyes while Kasumi returns the grin and extends her hand to shake his big, calloused one. “Kasumi Goto. A pleasure to meet you.”

 

“You too,” he says. “Always good to meet a friend of Shepard’s.”

 

“Shepard does have the most interesting friends,” she says. “You must have known her for a long time, I suppose?”

 

“Yeah, since she was a kid,” Casey says.

 

At the same time, April says, “About that...”

 

“About what?” Kasumi asks, bright but wary.

 

Casey runs a hand over his face, his smile turning rueful as he says, “Shepard didn’t tell you, did she?”

 

“Tell me what?” They’re being too cryptic by half, but in an embarrassed kind of way that she’s not sure how to read.

 

April heaves a sigh. “I’m going to kill her,” she announces.

 

“Big talk, Red,” Casey returns. “Listen, Kasumi, the rest of the team is not exactly human.”

 

Is that all? Kasumi smiles, relieved, though still poised to move if she needs to. “That’s not a problem. I’ve worked with a lot of aliens.”

 

April sighs again. “Not exactly alien, either.”

 

Kasumi blinks at that. “Come again?”

 

“They’re mutants,” April says. She and Casey glance at each other; he opens his hand in her direction, and she continues through an explanation that has a weary, practiced sound.

 

Kasumi listens, caught between relief and fascination; she’s a good judge of people, and this story, bizarre as it is, has the ring of truth. April’s anxiety makes more sense, too; she’s not worried about a trap about to go awry, she’s worried about _Kasumi’s_ reaction to her story.

 

When April’s done, Kasumi says, “So I assume that’s why your friend here is lurking in the shadows?”

 

Casey’s eyebrows go up, and April starts. “You—”

 

There’s a slight scraping sound from above, and then a bulky form swings down from a rafter and lands lightly—and silently—between them. “You knew I was there?”

 

Kasumi takes a long, curious look over the figure in front of her. It’s hard to believe he began life as a tiny aquarium-bound pet, considering he’s now around six feet tall. On the other hand, the green skin and the shell testify to his origins. His posture is tense, his gear is obviously well-used and well-cared-for, and the eyes behind the blue mask are sharp with intelligence and caution.

 

Shepard really does know the _most_ interesting people.

 

Kasumi smiles and lets her posture relax, her hand drifting away from her pistol. “I _am_ the best thief in the business. I didn’t get that way by failing to notice my surroundings.”

 

“Fair enough,” he says, relaxing only marginally. She has little doubt that he could draw in a moment if he thought it warranted. _Two_ swords, really, either he has some impressive ambidexterity, or he’s just showing off.

 

She rather hopes she gets to find out which. “Kasumi Goto,” she says, again. “And you are?”

 

“Leonardo.”

 

Her smile widens a tick. “So. Got any more surprises for me, or can we talk about how we’re going to liberate this artifact now?”

 

“Not here,” says Leonardo. “We have a lot to go over, and we’ll need time to prepare. And you should meet my brothers.”

 

“Back to the lair?” Casey asks.

 

There’s a _lair_. Kasumi grins in sheer delight.

 

This is going to be fun.


	2. Chapter 2

They go out a different entrance, single file, sticking to the deep shadows between buildings. Kasumi observes, and files for future consideration, that April and Casey follow Leonardo’s signals here. At his nod, Casey crosses into the street and pries up a manhole cover, peering down before lowering himself through. April follows. Leonardo gestures Kasumi to go next, and takes the rear himself. Kasumi climbs down the ladder easily enough. In the inky darkness below, she’s about to light her omni-tool when April catches her left wrist and whispers, “Wait a minute.” Only when the heavy cover slides back into place, with a slight scraping sound, does light flare from several tools, and Kasumi finds herself looking around in open curiosity.

 

It’s a sewer, all right, damp and musty, but she’s far more interested in the people around her. Besides April and Casey, both of them looking at her warily, there are four of them, just as April had said: four humanoid turtles, watching her with intent focus, if varying expressions. The tallest, the only one of the four who’s using an omni-tool of his own, regards her with a curiosity equal to her own; the shortest, who can’t be much taller than Kasumi herself, is built like a brick wall and looks at her with crossed arms and a wary scowl. Turning a smile in his direction only deepens the scowl. Only the middle one regards her with a bright smile of his own.

 

“My brothers,” Leonardo says, indicating each in turn. “Donatello, Raphael, Michelangelo. Guys, this is Kasumi Goto. Shepard’s friend,” he adds with a certain emphasis that Kasumi wonders at.

 

“A pleasure to meet you all,” she says. “Shepard’s told me... exactly nothing about you, actually.”

 

“She’s not supposed to,” Raphael says. “Let’s get going.”

 

Leonardo takes the lead, this time, with April and Donatello, both carrying lights, close behind. Casey and Raphael bring up the rear—Kasumi presumes the scowling turtle is keeping a suspicious eye on her—and she finds Michelangelo at her elbow, moving with a bounce in his stride. “How do you know Shepard?” he asks with cheery curiosity.

 

“She helped me retrieve something,” Kasumi says. “I helped her infiltrate the Collector base.” As always, she has to suppress a shudder at the memory of the place, the dankness of the sewer tunnels abruptly too reminiscent of the weird moisture on every surface in that base. It’s cooler here by far, though—the Collector base was warm, nearly tropical, uncomfortably reminiscent of body heat. It only then occurs to her that she doesn’t know what Shepard told _them_ about the Collector mission.

 

Michelangelo nods, though. “Oh yeah, the bug base! She told us about it. Well, she told April, we didn’t have very long to talk.”

 

Leonardo has glanced over his shoulder. “’Retrieved’ something?”

 

Her lips quirk at the judgment implicit in the tone. “Something that belonged to me,” she says flatly. “Or rather, to my partner.”

 

He frowns. “Your partner?” His eyes shift as if expecting her partner to materialize out of the darkness.

 

Kasumi’s smile grows tight. “Deceased, now.”

 

He blinks at that. “I’m sorry.”

 

“Thank you,” she says, a bit stiffly. She’s not used to accepting condolences. She doesn’t talk about Keiji often; there’s no need, when dealing with clients or marks, or when handling in cover. Those few she counts as friends already know. She looks away from Leonardo’s grave eyes and returns her attention to Michelangelo. “When did you talk to Shepard?”

 

“Well, we talk to her a lot, but we have to take turns,” he says. “But we went to see her in Vancouver!”

 

“In Vancouver,” she says, startled. “What, when she was under house arrest?”

 

“Yeah,” he says cheerfully. “It was rad. We were dodging military everywhere.”

 

“How’d you manage that?” she asks, genuinely curious.

 

He gives her a look like she’s being dense. “Ninjas, dude.”

 

“Of course,” she says, glancing them over again, noting the array of traditional weaponry. She twists around to see the ones behind her and gives the still-scowling Raphael a friendly smile and wave. Casey grins back. “How could I have forgotten?”

 

“Have you stolen a lot of stuff?” Michelangelo asks, drawing her attention back.

 

Kasumi smirks. “I certainly have.”

 

“What do you steal? Do you steal art? Jewelry? Ooh! Super cool tech stuff?”

 

“All sorts of things,” she says. “Art, antiquities, rarities for someone’s collection. I think I’ve stolen works by all your namesakes.” In point of fact, one or two of them might have been forgeries, but there’s no need to admit that now.

 

Donatello looks over his shoulder with a skeptical expression. “Donatello,” he says, “was a sculptor who worked in marble and bronze.”

 

Kasumi smiles brightly back. “I like a challenge.”

 

Donatello stares, brow ridges going up, and April snorts.

 

Michelangelo persists, eyes wide behind his orange mask. “What about jewels? Have you stolen, like, diamonds?”

 

“Yep,” Kasumi says, cheerful.

 

“How many diamonds? Lots of them? Do you still have them?”

 

“I don’t keep count,” she says. “Plenty. And no, I fenced them.”

 

“Aw,” he says, looking disappointed.

 

“I’ve also stolen tech, and secrets,” she adds, for the sake of completeness. And people, she supposes, but that was more along the line of _freeing kidnapping victims_ , and less proper stealing.

 

Donatello looks back at her again, a gleam in his eye. “Did you steal that ship? It’s amazing!”

 

“I know!” Kasumi says, with equal enthusiasm. “Surprisingly comfortable, too, for a military prototype.”

 

“The stealth systems are so sophisticated, and there’s some very innovative stuff going on with the drive core, but I only had a few minutes to take a look, and—ouch!” He rubs his side, where April just elbowed him. Hard, apparently, or maybe she caught a weak spot in the shell; Kasumi isn’t sure.

 

“Haven’t had much of a chance to look under the hood,” she says. “But no, I didn’t steal her. Shepard set it up.” She heaves an exaggerated sigh. “Very disappointing, really.”

 

Leonardo shoots her a dark glance over his shoulder, projecting a cloud of disapproval. Kasumi smiles back and changes the subject. “So how long have you known Shepard?”

 

“Forever,” Michelangelo proclaims.

 

“What Mikey means,” Donatello says, with a quick fond glance at his brother, “is that we met Shepard when we were sixteen. I think she was thirteen, so that would be... close to twenty years, now.”

 

“Like I said, _forever_.”

 

Kasumi takes that in, startled. It makes sense as soon as she thinks about the timing. Shepard’s been military since she was eighteen, and most of her life since then is a matter of official records. Some of them sealed, but that’s not a problem for Kasumi, who once filled up a few insomniac hours back on the _Normandy_ searching through Shepard’s classified military records. Shepard’s visits to Earth have been sporadic, though now that Kasumi thinks about it, Shepard took leave and visited New York on a few occasions, especially on significant occasions: after losing her squad on Akuze, and after defending the Citadel. It’s really only her youth that’s undocumented enough to allow for any secret of this magnitude. “Wow,” she says, impressed. “I knew she was good at keeping secrets, but I had no idea.”

 

Michelangelo grins. “Shepard’s the best.”

 

“What was she like back then?” Kasumi asks, full of curiosity. The Shepard she knows is clever and humorous, but also a force of nature; Kasumi thought Shepard had talked to her more frankly than others of the _Normandy_ crew, perhaps, but it was hard to imagine her as a child.

 

Everyone looks at each other, and Donatello shrugs. “Not that different, I don’t think.”

 

“I don’t know about that,” April says. “I mean, she was a lot younger.”

 

Casey says, “She was always a tough kid, though. Not afraid of anything.”

 

“She used to train with us,” Michelangelo chimes in.

 

“Really?” Kasumi pictures Shepard, how she moves on the battlefield, and has trouble making it fit. Kasumi had never pegged her as having martial arts training outside the military. Then again, Shepard wears heavier armor and uses a giant rifle these days.

 

“She was really stubborn,” April adds. “Too stubborn for her own good, a lot of the time.”

 

“That sounds like Shep, all right,” Kasumi says with a grin. She’s keeping her eyes open as they walk along, taking in as much information as she can. She strongly suspects she’s being led in a circuitous route, in hopes that she’ll be too distracted by the conversation to remember all the twists and turns. It’s certainly what she would do, if she had a secret lair. She supposes it’s a testament to their confidence in Shepard that they’re not insisting she go in blindfolded. She has a good spatial memory, though, and she takes note of the few distinguishing features in these seemingly endless sewer tunnels. She’d rather not be totally dependent on them to get back to her ship if something goes wrong.

 

“Good in a fight,” Casey puts in.

 

Kasumi glances around. “You got in a lot of fights?” Twenty years, they’d said, and they weren’t that much older than Shepard herself. What kind of life had they led?

 

“Enough,” Raphael says.

 

“And... Shepard did, too?”

 

“When she was older,” says Leonardo, sounding slightly defensive. “Fifteen.”

 

“Fifteen?” Kasumi is unable to keep the surprise out of her voice.

 

Donatello says, “Well, _we_ were fifteen when...” He trails off in hesitation.

 

“You mean, the first time you saved my life,” says April with a smile, nudging his arm. The two of them exchange a look that piques Kasumi’s curiosity. A silence falls; Kasumi evidently isn’t going to be privy to whatever did happen when they were fifteen, at least not now.

 

“Oh!” says Michelangelo. “One time, we were staking out this place, and this stray cat came up to Shepard and just started like yowling at her...”

 

The story lasts a while, and their path takes several more turns, ending at what looks at first to be a nondescript wall and turns out to be a concealed door.

 

“So this is the lair,” Kasumi says, following April in. “I love that you have a lair, by the way. Very superhero, or maybe trolls under the bridge.”

 

“ _Trolls_?” says Raphael, indignant. Kasumi goes for a disarming smile, but Casey’s the one who says, “It was a joke, dude. Relax.”

 

“No insult meant,” Kasumi says, cautiously. The bulkiest turtle glares at her and then grumbles something under his breath that she doesn’t catch.

 

“We were kids when we started calling it that,” Leonardo says with a grimace.

 

Kasumi looks around with fascination. It’s warmer and drier here than out in the tunnels, but it’s unmistakably still part of the system: lots of concrete and metal, with a faint underlying scent of must. It looks like a former subway station repurposed as a living space, remarkably effectively. Everything is a little worn and chipped or threadbare, with a surprisingly cozy, lived-in look. “You have power,” she notes with some surprise, blinking in the soft yellow glow of the lights.

 

“Shepard warned us,” Donatello says. “We’ve had more than two years to stockpile fuel for the generators.”

 

How much better off would they all be if everyone had taken Shepard’s warnings as seriously?

 

“Hey.” To her surprise, Michelangelo puts both hands on her shoulders and peers earnestly into her face. “Are you hungry? Did you get anything to eat? There’s pizza, and ramen.”

 

“Well, I wouldn’t mind something,” she says. “All I had was military rations.”

 

He gasps. “Oh, that’s awful! What do you want?” He lets go of her shoulders and springs into the kitchen without waiting for a reply.

 

April says, “It’s frozen pizza. It’s fine, but... honestly, I recommend the ramen.”

 

It’s noodles all around, then, simple but warm and homey, and that gives Kasumi another chance to observe her new companions. Trained in traditional ninjutsu, April had said, a notion that Kasumi might have found funny (ninjas? In this day and age?) if she hadn’t encountered the type before in other work. She already observed, back in the tunnels, that the weapons they carry are excellent quality, well maintained, and very traditional indeed; Casey and April are the only ones carrying guns—in April’s case, just a small pistol—and Donatello is the only one of the turtles who uses his omni-tool regularly, as far as she can see. Traditionalists, then. In the better-lit atmosphere of their home, she has a better view of all of them. It’s at once intriguing and disconcerting. The turtles are less human-looking than the average asari. They retain the sturdy shell of their origins, and their limbs are proportioned with thick wrists and ankles giving way to oversized hands and feet. Three fingers isn’t so unusual, in a galaxy full of salarians and turians; but theirs are thick and blunt and differently shaped than those of the alien species. Non-human as their physiology is, though, their body language is all human, easy to interpret, and their faces even more so: mobile and expressive, with large, vivid eyes and a familiar range of expressions. It’s a curious combination, but, she finds, not difficult to get used to.

 

Here in their home, their shoulders relax and tension eases out of everyone’s postures. The florid elegance of their full names, among themselves, has given way to nicknames, which she won’t presume to use just yet. Only Raphael keeps his guard up, keeping a wary eye on Kasumi; the others are easier with each other and with her, seemingly accepting her as a guest, if not a friend. Donatello asks Kasumi a dozen questions about her omni-tool and tactical cloak until April jostles him with her elbow and he subsides, looking sheepish; Casey and Michelangelo are joking with each other about the food and some past mishap involving kitchen appliances, which draws laughs from most of the others, although no more than a smile from Leonardo. There’s an easy camaraderie among all six of them, a casual familiarity that speaks to long, comfortable acquaintance. Kasumi wouldn’t be able to estimate the turtles’ ages easily; from what they’ve said themselves, they should be in about their mid-thirties. Michelangelo seems much younger, however, bouncing cheerfully around the kitchen and humming in spite of the lateness of the hour. Leonardo she might have guessed to be somewhat older, the most serious of them. As they all finish eating, a weariness settles over the group: eyes droop, shoulders slump, elbows get propped on the table. Leonardo hardly bends, but his eyes are tired.

 

“So what do we know about where this artifact is being held?” Kasumi asks once there’s nothing but a few drops of broth in her cup.

 

Michelangelo sighs. “Already? It’s late—ouch!” as Raphael whacks him on the back of the head.

 

“She’s here for a reason, dumbass,” he says.

 

“Blueprints,” says Donatello, bringing up the schematic on his omni-tool. “Unlikely to be fully complete, but this is what was filed with the city.”

 

Kasumi regards the plans carefully. “What about security? Electronic systems still active?”

 

“No guards on duty any more,” he says. “We should assume electronics are still active. People like that can afford an eezo-cell generator.”

 

“Right,” she says, eyes narrowing in thought. “So we need to either hack the security or get in and remove the generator core.”

 

“Those are usually in the heart of the building. I generally find it more trouble to get in there than it’s worth.”

 

“I’m smaller than the rest of you,” Kasumi points out. “I can fit into tighter spaces, if necessary.”

 

“Hm. True.”

 

“You might be right about the hacking, though,” she concedes. “Depends on how many layers of security they’ve got. If there’s a good voice-recognition system, we’ll have a problem.”

 

“We haven’t encountered much I can’t hack,” says Donatello, with the kind of calm that comes from experience, not braggadocio.

 

“I haven’t encountered much I can’t hack, either,” Kasumi says with a grin, “but there’s always a first time. I suppose there’s always cutting through a wall, in a pinch. Explosives are out; too much risk of damaging the artifact.”

 

“I’d rather not have to drill through anything,” Leonardo says. “Takes too much time and equipment. The faster we can get in and out, the better.”

 

“We agree on that,” Kasumi says, still considering. “We’ve really got nothing on internal security? Heat sensors, motion sensors, internal defense grid?” There’s only very basic info like security cameras indicated on the schematic.

 

“Afraid not,” April says. “Sorry.”

 

Kasumi frowns. There’s going to be a lot more improvisation and a lot less planning involved in this operation than she’d prefer. Normally, she’d do some research, find an excuse to scope out the building, maybe bribe a staff member or two for more detail. It won’t be the first time she’s improvised, but still... “Can we do a little reconnaissance before the actual op?”

 

They exchange looks around the table, wordless, all of them eventually looking toward Leonardo, who’s frowning in concentration. “Sure,” he says finally. “Tomorrow, around twilight. Reconnaissance only.”

 

“I can count on one hand the number of times that’s gone as planned,” Raphael mutters.

 

Leonardo sighs and flicks a glance in his direction, but doesn’t otherwise react. “It’s late. We should all get some rest.”


	3. Chapter 3

In spite of Leonardo’s words, it takes a while before everyone settles down. Kasumi finds herself pulled into the workroom or laboratory off to one side of the main room for a discussion of hacking methods and algorithms with Donatello; April follows, throwing in a few observations as the two of them get into it. After fifteen minutes, Kasumi can’t stop herself from smiling, and the turtle is grinning, too. They’ve each taken the other’s measure, and it’s a delight to find an ally with comparable skills.

 

“So about that tactical cloak,” Donatello says, with a gleam in his eye.

 

April sighs and rolls her eyes. “Like you can’t sneak around effectively anyway.”

 

“It’s always good to have options,” he says.

 

She pokes him with her elbow, raising an eyebrow. “You know Leo hates it when you depend too much on tech.”

 

He straightens to his full height. “I don’t depend _too much_ on tech.”

 

April snorts.

 

Kasumi smirks to herself. She activates the cloak while they’re talking and then takes two steps to her left. Their attention is caught by her sudden disappearance, but they’re both looking at where she was, not where she is.

 

“Nice,” says Donatello, eyes scanning the area and passing right over her. It’s especially difficult to spot the cloak’s scatter field when she’s not moving, and the viewer needs to know what to look for. “Wait, you’re still here, right?”

 

“Right,” Kasumi says, circling around behind April. She starts, whirling and sliding into a defensive posture. Donatello turns, too, trying to focus on where the sound of her voice was coming from.

 

“Hey, where’d she— whoa,” says Michelangelo from the door of the lab, as Kasumi drops the cloak and gives everyone a smile and wave. “That is so cool! Can I have one?”

 

“No,” says Donatello, bringing up his omni-tool for a swift scan.

 

“Awww, Donnie, why not?”

 

“You’re enough of a hazard without it,” he answers, with a kind of absent-minded affection. “That’s a slick program! I almost thought I saw you at the last second, but the effect is very faint.”

 

“I know,” says Kasumi with a smile. “I worked on it for a while. Shepard and I both tweaked the program.”

 

“Shepard worked on this? Cool.” He grins. “I’m not surprised. She always liked this kind of stuff.”

 

“Did you need something, Mikey?” April asks.

 

He jerks a thumb backward over his shoulder. “I was just gonna show Kasumi the spare room.”

 

“Oh, right,” Donatello says. “Sorry to keep you.”

 

Kasumi smiles. “It’s not a problem.” It truly isn’t, but it is, in fact, late, so she obligingly follows Michelangelo out of the lab and toward the small room where a spare futon has been set up for her. Casey and Raphael and Leonardo all seem to have disappeared, perhaps gone to bed already.

 

“We did clean it,” Michelangelo says. “I mean, it was clean, pretty much, but sensei insisted, and I know it’s not very big—”

 

“It’s fine,” she says. Yes, it’s small, but there’s a bed and a pile of blankets and even a space heater, and she’s slept in much, much worse. “It’s great, actually. Thanks.”

 

She’s rewarded with a broad, brilliant smile, and that Michelangelo shocks her by giving her a hug, swift and strong, nearly pulling her off her feet. “Bathroom’s down the hall on the left,” he says, breaking away. “’Night!”

 

“Good night,” she says, still startled.

 

She waits about fifteen minutes. It doesn’t take her long to sort out her few personal possessions and arrange her blankets in a mound, and then she simply waits. She can hear a last exchange of “good nights” between Michelangelo and Donatello, and then the sound of a door shutting; she waits a few more minutes, and then she activates her tactical cloak and slips out of her room.

 

It’s quiet, now, vidscreen off, lights dimmed as she makes her way around the turtles’ hideout. _Lair_. She smirks to herself again at the word. Monsters under the bridge, indeed, and she wonders which one of them first called it that.

 

Kasumi’s seen monsters—well, most everyone alive has, by now—and these people, with their weariness and camaraderie and wits and casual hugs, are about as far from monsters as she can imagine.

 

She pauses at the short corridor that leads to four closed doors, presumably the other bedrooms. The sound of snoring emanates from more than one room, two or perhaps even three sets, if she’s not mistaken. She’s tempted to slip down the hall and peer into one of the bedrooms. In her experience, you learn a lot about people from seeing where they sleep, where they live and keep their things, what sort of things they choose to keep. She decides not to for now; there’s other space yet to explore.

 

There’s still a light on in the lab, so she makes her way in that direction. Here it’s easy to slip in without anyone noticing, as both Donatello and April are at a workstation, focused on the screen. Kasumi strolls around the room, careful not to touch anything—there’s a lot of clutter. Tools are neat and clean and ordered, but parts and projects are stacked in a much more haphazard fashion.

 

“How much longer is this going to take?” April asks, catching Kasumi’s attention. The redheaded woman has one arm slung over the back of Donatello’s desk chair. Kasumi realizes her first estimation was wrong: Donatello’s focused on the screen, all right, but April’s focused on him.

 

“Just a few minutes,” he says absently, dark eyes still fixed on whatever he’s working on.

 

“That’s what you said fifteen minutes ago.” April moves her arm so it’s resting on his shoulder, not the chair. He blinks and stills for a moment.

 

“What time is it?”

 

“Time to quit working.” Kasumi can see her running one finger down the side of his neck. She watches, fascinated. Earlier, she’d seen them at ease with each other, almost always next to each other, with a kind of careless comfort. She thought there might be a bit more to it than that. It’s nice to know that she hasn’t lost her sense for these things.

 

“I just need to—”

 

“Donnie.” April leans close and whispers, “Come to bed.”

 

He blinks again and shivers before entering a last command into the interface. “Well, if you insist.”

 

April grins, victorious. “I do.”

 

He turns his head and they kiss; Kasumi keeps watching, head tilted, because it looks a little odd, and yet not as odd as she might have thought. They make it work, in spite of the different shapes of their mouths. After a minute or two, they break off, and Kasumi gets a good look at April’s face, pink-cheeked and smiling, with a softness in her eyes that says as clear as anything how she feels about the person she’s looking at. Donatello takes her hand as he gets up, and the two of them move off toward his—their?—bedroom in silent accord, switching off the lights as they go.

 

Alone in the dark lab, Kasumi smiles to herself. It’s an unlikely romance, on the face of it—her favorite kind. The pretty scientist and the mutant engineer, with more in common at heart than would appear on the surface. Charming. They’ve known each other a long time, they said; how long have they been a couple? She spins out half a dozen possibilities in her head—lifelong partners? Sudden insights? Long friendship slowly transmuting into romance? Each one would be its own kind of story. Kasumi steps lightly around the remaining stacks of gadgets and salvaged junk and makes her way into the common room. Now all really is quiet; after a moment’s consideration, she starts toward the corridor where the bedrooms are.

 

“I don’t appreciate your spying on us.”

 

She stops in her tracks at the sound of Leonardo’s voice, quiet but carrying easily through the space, and turns to find him watching her from the doorway into the dojo, arms folded and frowning. He is, in fact, looking right at her; caught out, she lets the cloak drop. “Just getting the lay of the land. Old habits die hard.”

 

“Habit doesn’t justify spying when you’re a guest in someone’s home.” His tone is tinged with disapproval, though he hasn’t moved.

 

Kasumi opts for a conciliatory smile and spreads her hands, palms out. “Apologies. It won’t happen again.” At least, it won’t happen again that she lets herself get caught.

 

The set of his shoulders relaxes slightly. “Accepted.” His eyes flick from her to the recently emptied lab and then to the corridor she’s heading toward, and the frown settles in. “Wait—were you _watching_... April and Donnie?”

 

Still smiling, Kasumi drifts into the common room. There’s a sunken area with a padded bench that serves as a couch and perches on the back of the couch, folding one leg onto the furniture in front of her and letting the other drop down onto the seat.

 

His eyes flick back and forth again, mouth curling with a hint of distaste. “Really?”

 

“Oh, come on. You’ve never wondered what they get up to?”

 

Definitely distaste, as his face scrunches almost comically. “No. I would much prefer not to know what my brothers get up to in private.”

 

Kasumi lets her smile widen until he realizes what he just said and lets out a long, quiet groan. “I didn’t mean to say that.”

 

“I know,” she says brightly. “That’s what made it funny.”

 

Leonardo shakes his head with a sigh, but the corner of his mouth twitches up. Kasumi finds that she counts that a victory. This one is much too serious. She pulls up her knee in front of her, balancing on the edge of the bench, and wraps her arms around her knee, lacing her fingers together loosely. “Come on now,” she says. “All that skill in stealth, the heritage of the renowned spies of old Japan, and you never use that around the house?” She grins. “I mean, lair?”

 

He blinks a couple of times, easing out of the doorway and into the room. “Well, of course we _practice_ , we have since we were kids.”

 

She grins. “That’s not exactly what I meant.”

 

“No,” he says, stopping in front of her. His brows have drawn together and he shakes his head. “I don’t spy on my brothers. It’s important that we respect each other’s privacy.”

 

Kasumi arches an eyebrow. “Never? Really? You’ve never even been tempted?” His eyes shift, and Kasumi grins. “ _Never_?”

 

“I can’t honestly say _never_...” He looks a bit sheepish. “I mean, once I was trying to figure out if Mikey had something of mine...”

 

“ _Once_?” Her smile is pure delight. “You really are the honest, upright, and honorable sort, aren’t you?” So much about Shepard becomes explained as she meets these people; she feels as if she’s suddenly seeing a full panorama instead of looking at one corner of a painting.

 

He sputters. “You’re a thief! How much room do you have to judge?”

 

“Oh, I’m a thief with principles,” she says, still smiling. “I steal from the rich and give to the poor.”

 

His brows curve into a skeptical expression. “Seriously?”

 

“Well. Sometimes,” she amends. “Out of curiosity, how did you know I was there?”

 

“Tactical cloak leaves a telltale shimmer. Doesn’t scatter the light quite right. I happened to be looking the right way as you came out of the lab.” He drops gracefully onto the cushioned seat and settles himself facing her, stretching out his legs in front of him. “You realize that’s cheating, don’t you?”

 

She laughs. “Using a tactical cloak? Hardly. Good sense, I say. You should look into it.”

 

He snorts. “Do you think Donnie hasn’t? We’ve had enough tech failures that I don’t want to get sloppy from relying on it.”

 

“Ooooh.” She leans over so she can whisper at him. “Tech _failures_? If you’re not careful, I’ll tell Donatello you said that.”

 

“Go ahead. He and I have had this conversation.” He crosses his arms, looking pleased with himself; he looks, suddenly, years younger.

 

Kasumi swings her leg over the back of the bench so she can drop onto the cushion with him. “Got an answer for everything, do you?”

 

He looks mildly surprised at her proximity. “Well, not... no. We’re not blindly traditional, I mean, we’ll use tech when and where it’s appropriate, but... I don’t want to get dependent.”

 

“Mm.” She tucks up her feet on the seat, wrapping her arms around her knees. The furniture is well-broken-in; she can feel how there’s a depression in the back cushion that doesn’t quite match up to her strictly human spine.

 

Leonardo adds, “It’s just, when it comes right down to it, you have to rely on yourself and your skills, you know? Tech, even weapons... everything beyond yourself is just a tool.”

 

She has to admit to a similar feeling, deep down; much as she’s mastered the use of electronics, at the end of the day she relies on her mind and her body’s speed and reflexes. “I know what you mean.” After a moment, she adds, “One of the things we have in common, I suppose.”

 

One of his brow ridges goes up. “In common?”

 

“Sure! Stealth, concealment, getting into places we’re not supposed to go...”

 

“We don’t do what we do for personal gain,” Leonardo says firmly.

 

Kasumi thinks back over all the things she’s done in her life, and all the reasons she’s done them. Her smile twists. “Who said anything about personal gain?” She leans forward and raises an eyebrow of her own. “Just what has Shepard been telling you about me?”

 

He startles, eyes widening. “Ah... not much, really. Just that you were the best thief she knew.”

 

Kasumi clicks her tongue. “And from that, you jump to so many conclusions about me. Tsk, tsk. Rushing to judgment.”

 

“You—” He breaks off. “That’s true. I apologize.” After a moment, he adds, with some asperity, “On the other hand, you _were_ sneaking around the lair invisible.”

 

She grins. “So I was. I’ll let you in a secret.”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“I do what I do because I like it,” she says in a conspiratorial whisper, “and I’m good at it. It’s not about becoming wealthy.” She has, to be sure, a substantial stash of credits from past jobs—although credits are less useful than they used to be—but the credits aren’t the point. She adds, “It’s about... pleasure in skill.”

 

He blinks at that and glances to the side. “Hm. I suppose I can understand that.”

 

She smiles, idly reflecting that his eyes are an unusually deep shade of blue. Pretty. Is that even a normal color for turtles? Kasumi isn’t sure. She lets herself get distracted for just a moment, before deciding to change the subject. She tips her head toward the darkened lab and asks, “How long have they been together?”

 

“Who? Donnie and April? A couple years, now.”

 

“But you’ve known her a long time, you said?”

 

“Since we were all teenagers.” He glances away. “It’s... a bit of a long story, honestly, and not really mine to tell. I think they just... when Shepard died, they stopped waiting.”

 

“Mmm.” Kasumi twines her fingers together, considering. It occurs to her that Keiji would have loved this whole adventure. The memory of him is warm and wistful, but more fleeting, these days, lacking the sharpness and anger that drove her to recover the greybox. “It’s nice when people find each other,” she says. “Especially in bad times. I guess it can be harder to make that jump from friendship, though. Shepard and Garrus were hopeless.”

 

“Shepard and—” Leonardo’s posture straightens, and the blue eyes narrow. “She’s seeing someone?”

 

Kasumi laughs and nudges him with her foot. “Please. She’s a big tough marine. She can take care of herself.”

 

“Right, of course she can.” He glances at her, and then away, before asking with feigned casualness, “So what’s he like?”

 

Kasumi has to restrain her laugh to keep it quiet. “Garrus? He’s great. Seriously. He’s a turian ex-cop vigilante sniper, and he adores her. That was what made things so obvious. They were both _worrying_ so much about each other, especially when they thought the other one wasn’t looking.” She grins. “Absolutely adorable. I wouldn’t have thought a big pointy battle-scarred turian could _be_ that adorable. Or Shepard, either.” She bites her lip, trying to restrain herself. Oh, there’s a lot she could tell, but since Leonardo’s gone over all big-brotherly, she decides not to tread further into details Shepard might find awkward. “She didn’t mention it?”

 

“She didn’t,” he confirms, letting his hands drop to his lap. “We haven’t had that much time to talk, though, between... well. One thing and another.”

 

“Galactic invasions do put a crimp into everyone’s social schedule.”

 

He laughs, softly, but hard enough to shake with it. “Can’t argue with that.”

 

_Laughter_. Out-and-out laughter, the first time she’s seen him laugh. It softens the lines of his face and brightens his eyes. In the privacy of her head, Kasumi does a little victory dance. Then she registers what Leonardo actually said, and what Michelangelo had said before, and frowns in puzzlement. “Wait a minute. How are you talking to Shepard, exactly?”

 

“There’s a communicator,” he says. “Ask Donnie to show you in the morning. He usually has it.” He yawns. “Speaking of morning, we should probably catch a few hours of sleep before it comes.”

 

“Yes _sir_ ,” she says, mocking. He rolls his eyes at her as he hauls himself up and she follows suit.

 

True to her word, Kasumi stays in her room. It was a long journey, after all, and she’s tired in spite of catching some sleep on the way. It’s a comfortable enough bed, and she sleeps dreamlessly.


	4. Chapter 4

Kasumi has always been good at snatching sleep when she can and waking up quickly. A master thief needs to stay alert, after all. She wakes, therefore, refreshed, digs herself out from under the mound of blankets, and heads toward the bathroom to freshen up. On a working day, like today, the routine doesn’t take long: wash face, comb hair, reapply a splash of color to her lower lip, just a bit of vivid cheerfulness to contrast with her normal shadowy garb.

 

On her way to the kitchen, she encounters no one, although she can hear thumps and grunts and other sounds of exertion coming from the direction of the dojo. It catches her attention enough that she drifts closer to the doorway on silent feet, until she has a clear view of the activity inside.

 

The four turtles are working through a complex kata, with April observing from the side. As she watches, Kasumi’s eyebrows rise, and she finds her jaw dropping.

 

In motion, they’re astoundingly beautiful.

 

She is still getting accustomed to their unusual physiology, but it seemed like, by rights, they ought to be ungainly, with oddly proportioned limbs and not enough flexibility in the spine. That couldn’t be further from the truth. The reality is that there is a lot of muscle in motion in the dojo, and it’s fluid, powerful, graceful motion, bodies moving in perfect sync. It’s impossible not to admire the display.

 

April catches her eye, smiles, and slips quietly out of the dojo. “I know, right?” she says in a low voice.

 

“They’re impressive,” Kasumi says, nonplussed by the other woman’s comment.

 

April gives her a crooked smile that turns both fond and proud as she looks into the dojo. “Yeah, they are. If you knew the half of it—” She shakes her head.

 

“Do you train with them?” Kasumi asks, curious.

 

“Yes,” April answers readily, still focused on the action. “Not quite as, um, regularly or intensely as they do, and I started late by their standards.” She wrinkles her nose. “Which means I started at age sixteen instead of infancy. At any rate, I’m not at quite the same level, so I sit this one out.”

 

Kasumi nods. April adds, “You can help yourself to anything in the kitchen.” A slight frown crosses her face. “Except the cat.”

 

“Don’t worry. Cat’s one thing I’ve never eaten,” Kasumi says lightly

 

April nods and sends a distracted smile her way, and heads back into the dojo.

 

In the kitchen, there’s a half-full pot of coffee on the counter and a still-warm tea kettle on the stove. Kasumi ponders and opts for the coffee, opens the fridge, and settles on a bowlful of leftover noodles from the night before, re-heated. She keeps an ear trained on the action behind her, so she hears when the rhythmic noise of practice breaks up into an assortment of voices, with a deeper, unfamiliar one mixed among the others. Finished eating, Kasumi turns to the sink to clean her dishes and pour herself a second cup of coffee. She hears the slight swish of fabric behind her, and turns back to the doorway to greet her visitor.

 

She’s glad that April’s explanation yesterday gave her some idea what to expect. Kasumi’s not especially squeamish, but the sight of a giant rat sends a certain visceral shiver down her spine all the same. She masks it and channels the impulse into proper manners, bowing politely and saying, in her native language, “Splinter-sensei, good morning. Thank you for your family’s hospitality.”

 

His ears shift slightly. “Kasumi-san. You are welcome here. I am pleased to welcome any friend of Shepard’s.”

 

Kasumi allows herself to smile at that. “You might want to be careful about that. Shepard has some rather disreputable friends.”

 

“Oh?” He tilts his head to the side. “Do you include yourself in that number?”

 

Her smile widens to a grin. “Me? Oh, no, my reputation is impeccable!”

 

He laughs, gently, and Kasumi relaxes. Unlike his turtle sons, Splinter wears a robe, which is just as neat and well-kept as their gear. Though he’s slightly stooped, his natural height is still considerable; he must tower over even the tallest of them. He is graying a little around the muzzle, and she wonders for a moment just how old the mutant rat is. “Yes,” he says, “I have heard you are an accomplished thief.”

 

“I don’t steal from friends,” she assures him, and he laughs again, brows rising.

 

“Ah, and are we fortunate enough to be counted in that number?”

 

She laughs, too. “Well, any friend of Shepard’s...” Her smile fades as she remembers how worn Shepard looked the last time she saw her. It nearly seems normal down here: there’s electricity, food, company, and a comfortable, homey routine. It’s almost possible to forget what awaits on the surface, and in the stars beyond.

 

“She is a remarkable young woman,” Splinter agrees.

 

“She is,” Kasumi says softly. She had taken the contract with Cerberus for many reasons: revenge, the desperate need to recover Keiji’s graybox, a fat fee, even pure curiosity. The last thing she had expected was to find a friend in the late, great Commander Shepard. She shakes off the sentiment and adds, “You would appear to have a rather remarkable family, altogether.”

 

He glances out, toward the sounds of training once again emanating from the dojo, and his mouth curls into a smile. “Yes. I hope you will permit me a father’s pride in saying so.”

 

“Of course,” she says. “And a sensei’s pride, no doubt?”

 

“They have progressed considerably in the art,” he says. One hand strokes his dangling whiskers. “Hence, as now, they practice without my supervision.”

 

“So I saw.” She half-wishes for another glimpse—the kitchen doesn’t allow her a clear view of the dojo—but it would be impolite to leave her companion for a look. “It was impressive.”

 

“Hmm.” He smiles, again, and takes a few steps out of the kitchen into the common room. “They still have a few things to learn.”

 

Kasumi follows, glad of a better vantage point. “Don’t we all?”

 

Inside the dojo, the training has shifted from the discipline of tradition to something less formal. Leonardo, his back to the observers, is saying something quietly enough that Kasumi cannot hear. “Okay, okay,” Michelangelo says, apparently in response. “Lemme just...” He sticks out his arms, letting his eyes go vacant and his jaw go slack, and staggers across the floor with a groan reminiscent of a husk. Kasumi claps a hand over her mouth as Donatello and April start laughing.

 

“I am not doing that zombie crap,” Raphael proclaims.

 

“No one’s asking you to,” Leonardo says with a sigh. “Would you just—”

 

“Fine, I’ve got it, can we just do this?”

 

They position themselves, and Kasumi quickly sees the point of the exercise: Michelangelo and Raphael are acting as husk-substitutes, rushing the others unarmed; Donatello and Leonardo act together to harry and push them, directing their movement away from the corner they’ve chosen to guard, while April, on the fringes of the action, seizes her moment to leap into the fray and attack Michelangelo from behind. Next to Kasumi, Splinter hums thoughtfully as the five combatants stand down and discuss the success of their tactics. Kasumi can’t quite make out the conversation, but there is a great deal of hand-waving on Donatello’s part, Leonardo shakes his head several times, Raphael slaps Michelangelo on the back of the head once, and April stands with her hip cocked and a wry smile on her face, fanning herself with her weapon. The relaxed energy between them is palpable, even from a distance.

 

“They must have been adorable children,” Kasumi finds herself saying, trying to imagine the smaller selves of the muscular adults in front of her.

 

Splinter chuckles, and when she looks at him, she finds that his expression had turned clearly fond, despite the inhuman nature of his face. “Indeed they were. And so small. It is difficult to believe I could once carry the four of them at once.” His tone grows dry. “Though it becomes less so when I remember the vast quantities they ate.”

 

Kasumi laughs out loud at that, and Splinter flicks her a friendly glance. She smiles back, only to find his gaze growing serious. Then he says, in a low voice, “It does not bother you, what we are?”

 

She shakes her head immediately, even while she considers her words more carefully. “One thing I’ve learned traveling around this galaxy is not to judge a book by its cover, or a painting by its frame.” Witness the fact that she is standing and having this conversation with a giant rat, for example.

 

Splinter nods, his posture relaxing. Kasumi smiles in turn, her attention going back to the dojo.

 

#

 

Once training is done, she stops by the lab to talk with Donatello about what kinds of resources they have available to deal with unwanted tech, and adds, “Leonardo said something about you being able to communicate with Shepard?”

 

“Oh, yeah!” He fishes around on the table and tosses her a small black device. Kasumi looks at it, bemused.

 

“What’s this?”

 

“A QEC,” he says matter-of-factly. “Shepard’s got the other end.”

 

Kasumi can’t mask her astonishment. “A QEC? How did you manage that?”

 

Donatello’s eyes light up. “After Shepard’s raid on the Collector Base, she passed us a lot of intel on Cerberus. We decided we could make better use of their toys than they could, so we broke into one of their labs. We got lucky and found a quantum-entangled pair, so I rigged it up into a real communication device. I left out the usual holographic projector to keep it more portable.”

 

“Nice,” Kasumi says, admiring the object in her hand. It’s unassuming on the surface, but once you realize that it’s state of the art for communications tech, it’s a lot more impressive.

 

“There’s an indicator if Shepard has her end turned on to receive—yeah, the light’s green, so you can go ahead and say hi if you want.” He rocks on his feet, looking as though he’s trying not to be _too_ proud of himself.

 

Kasumi grins back and presses the button. “Shepard?”

 

“Kasumi?” Shepard’s voice comes through with perfect clarity, startled, and maybe even relieved. “You made it.”

“I did.” Kasumi turns, surveying the lair. Donatello has turned to working on something at his computer console; the other three turtles are talking quietly in the main room, before they break apart and Raphael and Michelangelo head toward the exit. She doesn’t see Splinter or April right now, and hasn’t seen Casey yet today. “You left a few things out of your briefing, Shepard.”

 

She hears a familiar chuckle on the other end. “Yeah, I’m sorry about that. I was going to tell you, I just got held up in a meeting—”

 

“It’s fine,” Kasumi says. “Your friends have been very hospitable.”

 

“Good,” says Shepard. Her voice drops a bit. “Listen, um... how’s everyone doing?”

 

“I’ve only been here for a night, Shep, but they look all right to me.” Kasumi watches April walk up to Leonardo and engage in quiet conversation. “As well as can be expected.”

 

“Yeah,” Shepard sighs. For a moment she sounds weary. “I know it’s strange, but they’re... my family, really. It’s hard not to worry.”

 

“I get it,” Kasumi says quietly. Leonardo pats April on the shoulder, and she smiles back. She dashes past Kasumi into the lab to give Donatello a quick kiss and then she leaves the lair as well, smiling at Kasumi as she passes. Kasumi smiles and waves back. “But you should know, Shep, I might have mentioned you had a boyfriend.”

 

“Oh my God,” Shepard says, abruptly sounding much younger. “You didn’t.”

 

Kasumi grins. “Now I know you wouldn’t want me to lie to you, Shep.”

 

There’s a smothered sound on the other end, probably a laugh, before Shepard sighs again and says, “I have to go, unless there’s something urgent?”

 

She sounds lighter than she did. Kasumi says, “No, I’m good. If all goes well, I’ll be back with your gadget in a few days.”

 

“Good,” says Shepard, and now she sounds much more like Commander Shepard again. “We need every bit of data we can get.”

 

#

 

Leo keeps an eye on the thief as they make their way over the rooftops, but she keeps their pace easily enough. He thought she would, to judge from what he saw of her workout earlier in the day. There was a lot of tumbling, including some runs that made him a little envious. Their bodies just don’t bend that way. Sure, he and his brothers learned to adapt certain moves to their own physical limitations by the time they were twelve (and there are definitely compensating advantages), but it would have been nice if they didn’t have to. To judge from what he sees today, Kasumi Goto is exceptionally flexible, and stronger than her slim frame would suggest. In fact, she and Mikey seem to be engaged in something of a flip competition, but they’re being quiet about it, so he doesn’t tell them to knock it off.

 

He catches up to Raph at the edge of a rooftop, surveying the street below. Raph was the one who wanted to take the roof route, arguing that it let them get a better sense of what was going on in the streets. With Kasumi an unknown quantity, Leo’s initial thought had been to stick to the sewers as long as possible, coming topside close to their destination, but after seeing her practice, he’d agreed to go above. “She’s keeping up okay,” he says quietly to Raph.

 

Raph grunts, watching a half-dozen or so dogs running down the street. There are a lot of former pets loose in the city. The Reapers are totally indifferent to them. “She’s pretty fit,” he says. Grudgingly. “At least she’s not slowing us down.”

 

It does, actually, make Leo feel better to have Raph’s suspicious eye on Kasumi. Between that and his own observations, she shouldn’t be able to blindside them. He _hasn’t_ mentioned that he caught her sneaking around last night, because he doesn’t need Raph’s suspicion blowing up into full-fledged hostility. He’s been watching her carefully, and she’s kept her word—of course, everyone’s been up and about, so there’s less opportunity for sneaking, but still—she’s kept it. Every time she catches his eyes on her she’s flashed a cheeky grin. She knows he doesn’t quite trust her, and she doesn’t seem to resent it.

 

He likes her. He wants to like her. She’s friendly and clever. Mikey’s already decided she’s the best thing since pizza, but Mikey’s like that about new people. Donnie seems to think she’s okay, too—Leo hasn’t asked him specifically, but he can probably judge from the long, long discussion / argument about omni-tool mods and security systems that Donnie and Kasumi spent half the afternoon on. It went over Leo’s head quickly, but they managed to carry on the debate with Kasumi perched on the corner of a table in the lab, waving her hands but not disturbing any of Donnie’s precious projects, and it ended with both of them smiling, so that speaks well for her, too.

 

Leo did take April aside earlier in the day. “I’m not reading any malicious intent off her,” April had reassured him. “She’s curious.” She considered for a moment. “Fascinated, even. In a... friendly way, if that makes any sense. She’s actually enjoying herself.”

 

Leo let out a sigh. “At least someone is.”

 

April had smiled and patted his arm. “I think we can trust her, Leo. Shepard wouldn’t have sent her here if she didn’t think so, too.”

 

Which is true enough, but Shepard has a lot on her plate, and has only so many people to spare. Still. It’s hard not to like Kasumi, and that’s warring with the caution he’s trained into himself over the last decade.

 

Kasumi comes up next to him, sliding into a crouch at his elbow, sleek in her dark bodysuit. “Nice night for a run,” she says in a whisper.

 

“If you don’t mind all the Reapers,” Leo mutters. It’s twilight, but there’s enough light left to see a couple of vast dark shapes stalking around on the horizon to their west.

 

Kasumi flashes a smile. “Oh, they’re all the way over there. Is that even in the city?”

 

It’s probably in Jersey, in fact. Her dark eyes twinkle at him from under her hood, and he almost smiles back. He wishes he had a clearer view of her face; the hood obscures her eyes and casts her whole face into shadow. It bothers him more than he’d like to admit.

 

A yowl from the street below catches all their attention, as Mikey and Donnie join the rest of them in peering over the edge. “Aw, kitty,” Mikey says, in not quite a whisper. Sure enough, there’s a cat that’s been cornered by a couple of the dogs, and is making its displeasure known with a hissing, spitting, tail-puffed-out display.

 

“Poor thing,” Kasumi murmurs.

 

A blue shimmer coalesces around the cat and its feet leave the ground. One of the dogs lunges at it, and the hovering cat lurches sideways. The cat doesn’t like this much better than being cornered. It lets out an angry wail as it continues rising up to rooftop level. Leo heaves a sigh. “ _Mikey_.”

 

“What? I’m not hurting anything!” Mikey’s face is screwed up in concentration.

 

“You are not bringing that one home,” Raph growls.

 

“Never said I was gonna! I’m just helping it!” The cat drops on to the rooftop and the biotic field dissipates. The animal glares around, ears flattened, shakes itself, and tears off into the shadows on the other side of the roof. “See?”

 

“You’re biotics?” Kasumi whispers, and once again Leo really wishes he could actually see her expression.

 

“No,” he says tightly, “ _Mikey’s_ a biotic.”

 

“He _had_ to be the only one of us to get them,” Raph grumbles.

 

“How did that happen?” Kasumi asks, still quiet.

 

Leo still doesn’t like thinking about it, but Donnie’s already answering. “Actually, it turns out all of us have latent eezo nodules in our nervous systems, so it’s probable that the mutagen to which we were originally exposed had an eezo component. It’s possible that the nodules have something to do with our speed and agility, but I’ve found no way to measure the impact, since it’s not like I have a control group handy to—”

 

Leo clears his throat.

 

“—right, anyway, Mikey’s the only one of us to have the nodules activated by a secondary eezo exposure.”

 

“It was awesome!” Mikey says. “We were, like, boarding this ship and the engine was going critical, and—”

 

“It was not awesome,” Donnie snaps. He’s still not over this, either, no matter how long it’s been. “We weren’t sure if you were going to develop biotics or a _brain tumor_ , Mikey!”

 

“Pssshhh,” says Mikey. “Like that would happen. I’m totally okay, bro.”

 

Donnie is on the other side of Kasumi from him, but Leo is still pretty sure he can hear Donnie’s teeth grinding together. He’s grateful when Raph interrupts. “Are we done with weird science hour and rescuing stray animals now? Because I seem to recall we have a recon mission to do here.”

 

Kasumi’s grinning, and Leo wonders if she’s actually that amused by everything. “You’re right,” he says. “Let’s move.”

 

They’re off again, gliding and leaping over the rooftops, until they reach a spot where they can overlook their destination: a private home, all staid, gracious brick. They’re perched on the roof of a taller, multi-apartment building down the block, not an ideal vantage point, but an acceptable one.

 

“Mm. Pricy,” Kasumi murmurs.

 

Leo’s forced to agree. Real estate on Manhattan has been at a premium for centuries, and even if it weren’t, everything about the building they’re examining breathes _wealth_. It’s well-kept, ivy twining up the brick walls, the bit of grounds surrounding it slightly overgrown in the months since the invasion, but still neat.

 

Kasumi brings up her omni-tool, keying in commands. “I’m not reading any biometrics, but this isn’t the best range,” she says after a moment. “Are we sure the building isn’t occupied?”

 

“We haven’t exactly had the resources to keep it under surveillance, but we’re fairly certain,” Leo says.

 

“It doesn’t look inhabited,” Kasumi says, half to herself.

 

Donnie makes a slight noise. “Wish April were here. She could tell if the building were inhabited.”

 

Leo ignores him, since they’d already had this discussion, but Kasumi asks, “Why isn’t she?”

 

“She was needed elsewhere,” Leo says, shortly. It was true that April would be able to sense if the house were inhabited, but someone had to coordinate the supply run from Irma’s group to Maricruz’s, and April’s unerring ability to sense Reaper troops was better used there than here, especially since Casey and Angel were busy doing the training that he and his brothers aren’t available for tonight. Just thinking about it starts a dull pounding behind his eyes. Somehow the early effort of locating April and Casey and their other friends snowballed into something much bigger, and now the handful of them—him, his brothers, people they can trust—are coordinating a city-wide effort to fight back the Reaper invasion.

 

Turning civilians into an effective guerrilla fighting force is a lot of work. Especially when they all know that ultimately, it’s a holding action. They’re not going to defeat the Reapers alone, not without a fleet, or allies.

 

That’s Shepard’s department, and he doesn’t envy her her part, either. His own makes his head hurt enough.

 

“Hm,” Kasumi says when he doesn’t supply more details. He’s not inclined to tell her anything more about the others unless strictly necessary, and April’s abilities are private. “Power’s still on, though. Place is humming with electronics.”

 

Donnie peers over her shoulder. “Electronic security is active.”

 

“Can’t tell enough about the encryption from here. Might be motion sensors, though, maybe even a laser field to the vault.” She sounds positively cheerful, which isn’t doing Leo’s headache any good.

 

“Can you get in?”

 

She clicks her tongue. “Leonardo, I can get into anything. The only question is how long it takes. I’m going to need to get a closer look.” Without waiting for a response, she springs off the roof and slides down the drainage pipe on the outside of the building, swift and lithe. Leo stares after her for a moment and then notices Raph giving him a narrow-eyed glare. “What?”

 

Raph snorts and rolls his eyes, but says nothing. Leo grits his teeth.

 

“Someone’s gotta go with her,” Mikey points out.

 

“Donnie and I will go. You two keep watch up here. Let us know if anything’s coming.”

 

“Sure thing, bro,” says Mikey cheerfully. Raph apparently doesn’t feel like talking, and Donnie’s already heading down the fire escape. Leo gives up waiting for Raph to say anything and heads down himself.

 

The house is surrounded by a sizable wall, with heavy iron gates, and Leo catches up to Kasumi and Donnie examining the electronic lock at one of the outer gates. “We can get over the fence easily enough,” Donnie is saying quietly.

 

“Yes, but this shows me what kind of security algorithms they’re using,” Kasumi says. A moment later she adds, with confidence, “I can hack this. If this is what they’ve got on the building itself, no problems. We don’t have to try to go in through the vents and knock out the eezo core.” She turns her head, her mouth quirking up. “Unless you really want to.”

 

“It would be fun,” Donnie says, a little wistfully.

 

“But more complicated,” Leo points out, and then hears a creak coming from inside the fence.

 

They all hear it, fortunately, and dash away into a dark corner between this house and the next building. Still and silent in the shadows, they all watch as a humanoid security mech moves past with its characteristically stiff gait. It doesn’t appear to notice them, moving off on a circuit of the house.

 

“Mechs,” Kasumi whispers.

 

“Not a problem,” Leo replies. After fighting Reaper forces for weeks, standard security mechs will barely be a workout.

 

“I doubt they have anything as big as an YMIR mech in there,” Donnie adds, and Kasumi nods.

 

“That would be unusual in a residential setting, especially an older house like this one.” She hesitates for a moment. “We _could_ do this now...”

 

Leo and Donnie exchange looks. Donnie doesn’t have to say that he’d rather have April here. Leo’s about to veto the suggestion when Kasumi finishes her own thought. “... but another day will give me time to refine my programs.” She flashes a smile, which is all he can see of her face under the hood. “You were about to say no.”

 

Leo blinks. “I—”

 

“Don’t bother denying it.” Kasumi pats his arm. “You’re probably right, even. Look, the mech’s gone.” She steps out of the shadow, heading back toward the gate for another look at the lock.

 

Leo stares after her for a moment, startled by the casual familiarity. Donnie chuckles but quickly resumes a straight face when Leo looks at him.

 

It was a totally harmless gesture, and she didn’t mean anything by it, Leo tells himself. A sharp whistle from above interrupts his thoughts, and Mikey shouts, “Incoming, dudes!”


	5. Chapter 5

Kasumi whirls when she hears the shout. Only a moment later, she can hear the rumble of approaching footsteps. She drops into a crouch and reaches for her Locust. She let Shepard keep the real one, but the replica’s just as good, solid and reassuring in her hands.

 

“Donnie, Kasumi, take their shields down,” Leonardo calls, running in the direction of the rumble that’s growing louder and clearer.

 

“On it,” Donatello replies, taking up a defensive stance near Kasumi but shifting his staff to one hand so he can access his omni-tool. Kasumi smiles at the protectiveness even as it makes her roll her eyes.

 

“I have a gun,” she points out. “You might not want to stand in front of me.”

 

He throws a look back over his shoulder and adjusts his position. “Right.”

 

Most of the soldiers of Kasumi’s acquaintance avoid hand-to-hand combat with husks; the preferred protocol is to keep them at bay with gunfire and to only engage with omni-blades and other close-combat weapons when absolutely necessary.

 

The turtles ignore those protocols entirely. Once the mass of husks and marauders comes into view, there’s a war-whoop from above, a chain lashes out, and Michelangelo rockets down from the rooftop into the center of the mass. Raphael follows, launching himself off the wall and into the fringes of the cluster. Leonardo had braced to meet the oncoming horde, blades at the ready, and as its vanguard reaches him, he spins into the mass and the husks begin to fall.

 

She can easily pick out the taller figures called marauders; mostly turian, they seem to direct the others and carry guns. “You take left, I’ll take right,” says Donatello, and they set to work, disrupting the superior cybernetic systems that power shields and who knows what else for their opponents. Kasumi alternates her tech attacks with bursts of fire from the Locust, working her way left as she does. She _has_ to check out how Donatello has specced his omni-tool, though, because he sets off three bursts of energy in quick succession. Most omni-tools can’t handle that much power draw in that short a time. His attacks leave three marauders sparking and shrieking before Donatello charges in himself, somewhere to Leonardo’s right, and only then does Kasumi see the blade at the end of the staff he carries.

 

The four brothers have carved the mass of enemies into clusters, she notes, each of them working his way through a section largely on his own, moving with enough agility and speed that the husks can’t pin them down even with their superior numbers. She only has a clear view of Leonardo, the closest to her, who’s leaving a swathe of dismembered husks in his wake. _Ambidextrous_ , Kasumi concludes, watching him work with both weapons, as he kicks a husk off with his right leg, pivots, and slices the creature’s head off with his left blade.

 

For herself, she finishes off two of the marauders Donatello left damaged. Raphael beats her to the third, ripping a cluster of cables out of its throat with his sai.

 

She’s the only one with a gun, so it makes sense to focus on enemies with range. She darts left to keep her line of fire clear and sights on the first Cannibal even as Leonardo shouts for her to do so. She grins to herself as she calls back, “Got it!” and opens fire.

 

Cannibals are gross. Possibly her least favorite of the Reaper creatures. She’s sorry for whatever they used to be—mostly batarians and humans, from the looks of them—that they got made into something so unpleasant. Do the Reapers have favorite minions? Probably not, but if they did, she doubts the cannibals would be among them.

 

Her fire rocks them back, though, moaning and roaring. She knows her Locust well and falls into its rhythm easily: firing a stream of shots, ejecting the heat sink, slapping a new one into the slot with the speed and efficiency of long practice. The turtles have heavily thinned the mob of husks, moving in sync with each other even though they’re working separately. All the lithe athleticism she observed in their practice is now in full, practical display. She still has the best view of Leonardo, who dodges, spins, and lunges so effectively that husks mostly don’t get close to him at all.

 

When he lets out an alarmed yell and plunges further into the crowd, though, a few follow in his wake. Kasumi tabs on her cloak and goes after them. She can see in her peripheral vision that Raphael and Donatello are both fully occupied and too far away to keep the husks off his back.

 

The husks block her view of Leonardo for a moment. She hears a thud, the whistle of metal through the air, and Michelangelo saying, “I’m fine, bro, relax,” and then she flash-forges a blade out of her omni-tool and cuts through the knot of cybernetics at the base of a husk’s neck. Her cloak drops as she does, temporarily disrupted by the surge of energy needed to forge the blade. Leonardo whirls as the husk falls. Kasumi has a glimpse of white eyes behind the blue mask before he blinks and they turn blue again.

 

“Uh, thanks,” he says, looking startled.

 

She flashes her sweetest smile. “My pleasure.”

 

His eyes go solid white again. Kasumi reads his movement quickly enough to dodge to the side as he lunges past her, skewering the husk that was coming up behind her. “That one’s _my_ pleasure,” he says.

 

“A favor for a favor!” Kasumi calls back cheerfully.

 

Michelangelo laughs and takes a moment to say, “That was awesome, Kasumi,” before turning and unleashing a biotic wave against the rest of the husks that knocks most of them off their feet. Donatello, now finished with his previous opponents, moves in to finish them while they’re down. Kasumi makes to move back out to the edge of the group when the ground under her feet starts to shake.

 

Donatello shouts, “Brute!”

 

Kasumi’s spine shivers. Scratch that. Brutes are her least favorite of the Reaper creatures. Their misshapen bodies are among the most disturbing, and they smell like a mixture of something rotting and ozone. They smell like the Collector Base, simultaneously organic and unnatural. The gorge rises in her throat as she braces and looks in the direction of the noise.

 

The brute charges into view and roars, thrusting its chest forward and clenching its talon-like hands into fists. Kasumi hits the control for her cloak as fast as she’s ever managed it and darts out of its path. There’s not enough cover in this alleyway—though cover only does so much against brutes, anyway. She pulls herself to the side, still invisible, and aims the Locust at the thing’s neck, one of its weak points.

 

The turtles, in contrast, have spread out into a loose semicircle around the brute, each of them poised and ready. The brute swings its head around on its strangely jointed neck, as if trying to select its target. Leonardo moves to catch its attention, the steel of his blades glinting in reflected moonlight, but Michelangelo moves and shouts, and the brute roars and heads toward him.

 

Everyone moves at once, then, so fast that Kasumi doesn’t dare fire. The brute charges Michelangelo, who spins aside at the last moment, getting in a few hits with his nunchucks as he does; Leonardo darts in on the other side, slicing a gash along the brute’s shoulder, which leaves its left arm limp and useless. At the same time, Donatello moves in on its right leg, slashing at the tendon along the back of the leg. She realizes she’s lost sight of Raphael.

 

The brute bellows and lashes out, scattering the three turtles she can see. She takes the opportunity to fire off a burst, though most of her shots land in the tough hide of the thing’s barrel chest, stitching a row of oozing holes that will slow it down, but not finish it. It wheels its head toward her position, cybernetic eyes glowing in the fading light, and Kasumi darts to a new location on her right, under cloak.

 

Leonardo’s back on his feet, launching a flurry of blows at the brute. It lunges back at him, seizing one of his arms in its clawed fist and yanking the turtle toward itself. Instead of resisting, Leonardo gives in to the motion, using the momentum to slide his free sword through a weak point in the brute’s armor, near the arm joint. It shrieks, writhing, as attacks hit it from the other flank, and then Kasumi spots Raphael on the brute’s back. The brute realizes its danger, too late, throwing its head back in an effort to bite its unwanted cargo. The attack just misses Raphael, who slams one sai home at the base of the thing’s neck. It screams once more before Raphael simply grabs the misshapen skull and yanks, jumping free as the carcass falls. “One for me,” he says, his smile a quick flash of white in the dimming light.

 

“I had it,” Leonardo says, sounding annoyed.

 

“Not fast enough, bro.” Raphael thumps him on the shoulder.

 

They all look up as a distant screech sounds through the darkening night. “Harvester,” Leonardo says. “Let’s get out of here before it drops another load.”

 

“Should be a manhole one block east,” Donatello says.

 

All in all, Kasumi much preferred the journey over the rooftops. Going through the sewer tunnels is just a dank, dim slog, though she doesn’t think they’re taking her on a deliberately circuitous route this time. “So,” she says once they’ve descended and gotten a tolerable distance away, “coincidence that the Reapers struck just then and there? Or were they after us? Or the Prothean artifact?”

 

The four of them exchange glances. “Probably a coincidence,” Leonardo says at length. “They drop units into the city regularly, different locations.”

 

“No particular pattern,” Donatello adds.

 

“Just our luck to have them there tonight,” says Raphael, bringing up the rear.

 

Kasumi nods, satisfied. The walk back to the lair is quiet, though Raphael and Michelangelo begin comparing the numbers of husks they destroyed. Donatello chimes in, as well, but Leonardo does no more than sigh in their direction. Kasumi notices the others glance at him, but they leave him to his own devices as he walks on at the head of the group. She watches his back with no little curiosity as she listens to the others’ quiet conversation. His shoulders are tight set and his head drops a little as they get closer to their home. Kasumi remembers the night before, when they’d talked like regular people, and she’d even gotten a laugh out of him. Tonight, he’s nearly a different person. She’s tempted to try to breach his silence, but some part of her is reluctant to presume with the others present, so she simply watches the blue mask tails drift against his shoulder and shell as they walk in the dim, damp tunnel.

 

#

 

Leo feels better in the familiar warm light of home. A lot could have gone wrong tonight; their recon wasn’t supposed to get interrupted by Reapers. None of them came away with serious injuries, at least, which is good, considering they had a brute to deal with.

 

He lets his brothers scatter—April and Casey are back already, and Donnie and Raph are drawn to them like magnets, while Mikey wanders off to the kitchen and starts rummaging around. Leo pulls Kasumi aside, hoping they won’t need to risk themselves again with more reconnaissance. “Do you have what you need, in terms of recon?”

 

Kasumi shrugs, her mouth turning down in thought. “I think so. I took some scans of the building, and I got a good look at their locks. I’ll go over the scans and consider options. There’s not much more I can plan without actually seeing the inside of the place.”

 

He nods, crossing his arms. “Is that going to work?”

 

Her laugh is bright and musical, her eyes sparkling under the hood. “Any heist is a mixture of planning and improvisation. This one’s going to lean toward improvisation more than others, let’s just put it that way.” She smiles, bracing one hand on her hip.

 

Leo lets out a soft breath, not quite laughter, and tries to think things through. “I like to have a plan, but improvising we can do.” Kasumi worked well enough with the four of them, which is something of a relief. “We’ll go tomorrow night, then, if you think you’ll be ready. I think April can come along, so we shouldn’t be surprised by Reapers again.” Casey, too, maybe, unless he’ll be wrapped up with something else; Leo will have to ask. He needs to hear from Casey what’s going on with the other Resistance groups he was out and about with today, anyway.

 

“Why would that help?” Kasumi asks.

 

He blinks, realizing that he’s forgotten himself, gotten distracted . Kasumi has eased her way a little closer, looking up at him with intent dark eyes. He schools his expression back into neutrality. “April has a sense for these things.” No need to say more. She doesn’t really need to know about April’s extra abilities, and April doesn’t exactly like them to be widely known.

 

She blinks for a moment, but accepts the answer. “Tomorrow night, then? After sundown?”

 

“Yes. If that works for you.”

 

Kasumi smiles, bright and warm. “Sounds perfect! I’m looking forward to it.”

 

Her enthusiasm is contagious enough that Leo musters up a faint smile. Her own broadens in response. She nods and heads past him, her shoulder brushing against his arm as they part ways. Leo starts at the contact and turns to look after her, but she doesn’t look back, and there’s nothing overtly flirtatious in her gait. She looks perfectly normal sauntering off—at least, as normal as a woman in a close-fitting armored bodysuit _can_ look. The touch probably didn’t mean anything. It was just an accident, or maybe she’s the sort who’s a little casual about personal contact. Not a big deal, either way.

 

He looks away, trying to get his mind back on track. Check in with Casey and April, see what the situation with their allies is, then go from there.

 

#

 

“Is your brother always so serious?” Kasumi asks Michelangelo, later.

 

She’d offered to help with the dishes after they all had a late meal—it seems only polite to help out, and besides, it gives her the chance to chat with the least guarded of the brothers.

 

“Who, Leo?” he replies. “No. Well, yeah. Kinda.”

 

Kasumi smiles, her eyebrows rising as she industriously dries plates. “Kinda?”

 

“I mean, he was always like Mr. Serious Leader Dude, since way back—since we first got to go up to the surface.” He smiles, his gaze drifting into the past. “That was so cool. But yeah, Leo’s, like, used to being in charge, and he always takes that seriously. But it’s gotten...” He breaks off and frowns, an expression that doesn’t quite sit right on his open face.

 

Kasumi hums encouragingly and continues drying dishes as he hands them over, one by one.

 

Michelangelo shrugs. “He’s gotten... he used to have more of a sense of humor. It’s the war, I guess, I mean, everything kinda sucks and Leo acts like he has to fix all of it all the time, you know?”

 

“That’s a lot to take on,” Kasumi says, thinking of Shepard.

 

“Yeah, I know, and I know it’s a big deal and there’s a lot more people, we have a ton of friends now, so there are people all over the city like working together now and Leo’s strategy guy, so... I get it, but Donnie’s in charge of stuff too, and he’s not as bad.” He frowns. “But then April’s here most of the time now. I mean, Leo hardly even smiles any more.”

 

“Hmm.” She remembers the night before, how much a smile transformed his face from stern and stoic to something more vibrant, younger-looking. “But he used to?”

 

“Oh, yeah! He used to be a lot more fun. He was always into sci-fi shows, you know, lots of space adventure—but I guess you’ve had real space adventures—”

 

Kasumi grins. “The fictional kind are fun, too.”

 

“Yeah, his favorite was an old show, I think we first saw it when we were really little. That was before anyone knew there were real aliens, and this guy Captain Ryan flew around in his spaceship exploring stuff.”

 

Kasumi laughs, delighted. “ _Space Heroes_? You all used to watch _Space Heroes_?”

 

He grins back. “Yeah, that was totally Leo’s favorite. He watched all the episodes over and over, and when we first started going up to the surface he used to, like, imitate Captain Ryan? He’d be all, _I am giving the orders and you can’t question the orders_ and stuff?”

 

Kasumi is laughing so hard at the mimicry that she has to put the glass she’s drying down on the counter.

 

Encouraged, Michelangelo goes on. “I could read all his other comics, but he would get _so mad_ if I did anything to his _Space Heroes_ ones. And... like, we knew we could never really go to space, but when we were, I don’t know, ten or eleven, Leo said he was going to stow away on a spaceship and go away and meet aliens.”

 

“That’s so _cute_ ,” she says, trying to picture them at that age.

 

“We were already doing ninja training, so we were pretty good at hiding. We never did it, but I remember Donnie making a map to the shuttleport.” He looks down, his smile fading for a moment. “So yeah, I know Leo’s not being really friendly now, but it’s just... just the war, I think. Don’t think he’s always like that.”

 

“Oh, it’s all right.” Kasumi goes back to drying. “I wasn’t thinking anything bad, promise. I like you guys.”

 

The smile is back and blinding. “Great! Hey, you must have met lots of aliens, right?”

 

“I’ve seen my share,” she allows. Time to give back a little, and she can tell stories about the _Normandy_ crew for hours. “There were quite a few on Shepard’s crew.”

 

“Yeah, she said.”

 

Kasumi smiles. “Did she ever tell you about her salarian friend?”

 

#

 

It’s getting late, but Leo isn’t ready for rest yet. His mind is too busy humming with activity after the evening they’ve had, and after talking to the others.

 

He can hear the others’ voices around the lair, although from his own room he can’t make out the specifics, even with the door open. He can just hear the rise and fall of voices, and occasional laughter, especially from the kitchen, where Mikey and Kasumi are talking. From Raph’s room, the lower registers of his voice and Casey’s. The occasional sounds of tinkering from the lab, where Donnie and April are working on building some more of the transmitters they’ve scattered around the city to make their communications possible. From what Casey said, the Reapers, or maybe just weather or animals, has managed to knock out a couple of them, leaving them with poor signal in a couple of neighborhoods. And April said that some of the kids with Murakami-san are coming down with something, so they need to acquire some medications or swap them around among the different groups. Casey can head out tomorrow to meet up with Angel and Nick and maybe Maricruz to take care of things and set up Donnie’s transmitters. That’ll restore communications, but it’ll take him out of tomorrow night’s mission. That’ll be okay—April can come, and Leo’s confident that she and his brothers and Kasumi can get it done. They’ll break in, retrieve the Prothean artifact that Shepard and her asari friend think might have the data they need to build their giant Reaper-stopping device, and Kasumi can take it off-world. It could be key to the whole war effort. No pressure.

 

Tonight calm is elusive. Leo closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, then another, but his mind keeps racing. Too many things to keep track of. It had seemed to simple, back when the invasion started—find April and Casey and the rest of their friends and make sure they were safe. And then it just kept... escalating. They couldn’t abandon Casey’s hockey team; they were just teenagers, and some of them might never see their parents again. Taking steps to keep them safe and fed got them in contact with others. Donnie started rigging up the transmitters so they could keep the dispersed, mobile groups in touch with each other. Once they had that in place, they could track down more of their friends—Irma had finally called April, and her hydroponics set-up has been invaluable for getting food, and Angel showed up with a bag full of home-made bombs, and then there was a critical mass of adults who wanted to fight back, so... there they are. It’s a mess of moving parts. They’re scattered in small groups, trying to protect the kids and other non-combatants, and then there are the teams of fighters to coordinate and keep supplied with weapons and food and medi-gel.

 

Leo shakes himself and tries to settle again. Everyone plays their part. April and Casey do a ton of the legwork to keep things moving. Raph and Mikey have turned out to be a lot better at training others to fight husks than Leo ever would have imagined. Donnie’s working on a dozen projects besides setting up those transmitters, doing his best to track and predict the Reapers’ movements. Leo just... seems to be strategizing for _all_ of them now, and it’s hard to dismiss the clamor of details out of his head.

 

He could shut the door to his room instead of leaving it open, but there’s something comforting about the noises of his family, even when he’s alone in his room. They’re more exposed now than ever before—necessity, but it still has him on edge—and it’s good to know that everyone’s home and safe and uninjured.

 

It’s not enough to clear his head right now, though, so Leo reaches for the box of paper.

 

Splinter taught them all the basics of origami when they were young, one of many activities intended to keep them safely occupied. Back then, they’d never had the right kind of paper. They had used a lot of scraps and leftovers, even pages of books that were too damaged to read. Leo is the only one who’s really kept it up. Even when they were younger, Mikey liked to draw things out of his own head, and Raph preferred paint, and Donnie would rather build things that _do_ something. But Leo has always liked how you take a flat sheet of paper and turn it into something else with a few precise folds. Something that stands on its own, a three-dimensional creature. April gave him a huge stack of good origami paper for Christmas a year or two ago, just the right weight and crispness, an array of bright colors and patterns.

 

He’s been using it a lot since the Reapers invaded, to help calm his mind. Now he takes a piece of yellow paper and folds into a crane, a shape so familiar he hardly needs to think about it. He drops it into the basket with the other finished ones and takes another sheet of paper, green with white dots.

 

The repetitive motion does its job. As he folds each creature and adds it to the basket, the clutter starts to recede from his mind and the tension starts to go. It leaves him more aware of his fatigue, but that’s all right, too. He’ll need to sleep.

 

There’s a soft tap at the door, and when he looks up, Kasumi stands in the doorway, one shoulder leaned against the frame. “I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

 

“No.” Leo pauses with another half-finished crane in his hands. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

 

“I’m fine.” She eases her way in. “Actually, I was wondering—oh! How lovely.”

 

Her eyes are fixed on the basket that’s nearly full of origami creatures, a riot of brightly colored paper. “It, um, calms my mind.”

 

She nods, plucking a bright pink crane out of the basket. “They’re so cheerful.”

 

“Something has to be,” Leo says, and clears his throat. “Did you need something?”

 

Kasumi returns the crane to the basket. “Actually, I wondered if there was anything I can do for you. I’m going to need an hour or two to prep for tomorrow night, but if there’s anything I can do, let me know. I’m here, you might as well use me.”

 

“Use you,” he repeats, feeling a little blank.

 

The corner of her mouth turns up. “I’m good with tech, you know.”

 

“Ah... I think we’ve got it covered,” Leo says, trying to think. “I know you’re only here for the mission.”

 

She shakes her head. She’s still smiling, but only slightly, making her expression more serious than he’s used to seeing it. “You guys are on the front lines down here. I want to help if I can.”

 

A little warmth steals into his chest. “Thanks. I guess... you could see if Donnie needs a hand with anything, maybe.”

 

Kasumi nods, stepping back toward the door. “I will. And I’ll let you be for now.”

 

“Thanks.” Leo sets the basket and the box of paper aside. “Um, be sure to get some rest, too. I think I’m ready to turn in myself.”

 

She smiles once more before leaving, a smile that’s soft and warm. “Good night, then.”


	6. Chapter 6

The first parts of the plan for the night’s mission are simple: they’ll go over the fence, take out any mechs they encounter on the grounds, and Kasumi will hack the lock.

 

After that, it all depends on what they find. The schematics suggest a couple of locations for secure storage, so they’ll try those first, but they’ll have to keep an eye out for security systems as they go. If the artifact isn’t where they expect, they may have to search the entire building.

 

For Leo, it’s something of a relief to finally get down to it. The whole day was spent dealing with logistics; Leo had spent half the day talking through tactics with several of the cell leaders while Donnie and Kasumi built transmitters to keep the rest of their communications network running. It is good to be _moving_ , to put their skills to use. It’s good to have a mission, something defined, with a clear-cut goal to accomplish. He can feel the knots ease out of his neck and shoulders as they make their way through the cooling night air.

 

The street outside the house still has the remnants of the husks and brute they killed the day before, but there’s nothing waiting to ambush them.

 

Leo motions the others to go on, and takes a moment to scan up and down the street, making sure nothing’s approaching while they’re at the vulnerable moment of scaling the fence.

 

“Give me a boost?” Kasumi asks.

 

Donnie’s taller, but he’s already boosted April over and then vaulted himself. Mikey simply jumped, nearly to the top, before dropping down on the other side. Raph is hauling himself up and has almost reached the top. Leo nods and bends, offering his joined hands. She sets her foot in them and he tosses her up. She’s light, and nimble, easily catching the bars of the fence, flipping herself over, and dropping to the other side, landing silently in a crouch. Raph’s over, now, too, so Leo takes a couple of steps back to give himself a running start, and springs for it. In a few moments they’re all inside the grounds.

 

“Well, that was the easy part,” he mutters.

 

Kasumi laughs quietly. “That means the fun part’s beginning.”

 

Leo gives her a skeptical look. She smiles back, so bright and genuine that his own mouth twitches and he has to cough to cover it up. Before he can urge her to get to work, she crosses to the door at the back of the building and crouches down by the lock. Her omni-tool lights up, uncomfortably bright in the twilight, but Leo supposes there’s no help for it. “Spread out, keep watch,” he tells the others.

 

A door opens somewhere further down along the house’s long wall, and a single mech emerges. It only takes a few jerky steps before it collapses, sparking around the sai sticking out of its head.

 

“Let’s hope it didn’t have time to signal its little friends,” Donnie says quietly.

 

“Didn’t look like it did,” Raph answers, darting over to retrieve the weapon.

 

Donnie sighs, muttering, “It’s an electronic signal, it wouldn’t be visible.” Kasumi chuckles without looking up from her work.

 

“How’s the lock coming?” Leo asks, scanning their surroundings. There’s no threat visible, but the quiet is just stretching his nerves tighter. He wants to get inside and out of view, as soon as possible.

 

Kasumi clicks her tongue. “Patience, my ninja friend. Aha! There we are.” The indicator light on the lock flares green, and the door opens with a soft click.

 

The door leads to a small antechamber, lined on either side with boots, coats, umbrellas, and other outdoor paraphernalia. Only one door from there, not locked, and that leads to— a garden.

 

It’s so incongruous that Leo stands still, and the light here is bright enough to make him squint for a moment. The air is damp and fresh, but the amount of cover makes the back of his neck itch. There are banks of plants around the outer walls and several rows bisecting the middle, with the long side facing them; it would be easy for an enemy to hide behind the rows of foliage.

 

Coming up beside him, Kasumi gasps. “Oh, I love roses! This is gorgeous!”

 

“Keep your guard up,” Leo says, signaling. Raph rolls his eyes at the advice but moves up on the left with Mikey, while Donnie and April do the same on the right. “Someone might be maintaining this.”

 

“I don’t think so,” Donnie says, reaching the other side of the room. “I think it’s all on automated systems.”

 

“He’s right, these have been watered but not pruned or tended.” Kasumi walks along the row of shrubs, pausing to touch the petals of a bold, deep red rose. Ahead of them, Donnie cuts off a yellow rose and offers it to April, who smiles and tucks it into her belt pouch. Leo sighs, even though the two of them are moving on.

 

Kasumi tosses him a smile over her shoulder. “You don’t think it’s romantic?” Her gloved fingers trail past a bush full of pink roses.

 

“I’d prefer to stay focused on the mission.”

 

“Hm.” She quickens her pace, to his relief. Raph and Mikey are already at the exit from this room and step out to scout the corridor. “You remind me of someone,” Kasumi says, and adds, “When I first started, I used to leave a rose in place of anything I stole. My calling card, as it were.”

 

Leo blinks at the non sequitur. “Why?”

 

She shrugs. “I thought it was the thing to do. I had a few... romantic notions about my new profession. Then someone pointed out to me that it was sentimental and unprofessional, and really quite foolish.”

 

That had been more or less what Leo was thinking, although... he remembers, too, how exciting the life of a ninja had seemed when he was fifteen. How it had taken a few brushes with mortal danger to take things more seriously. “That sounds... deflating.”

 

“Oh, he was completely right, of course,” Kasumi says.

 

They reach the others at the doorway, and Raph says, “The corridor splits. Which way?”

 

Donnie, looking at his omni-tool, shakes his head. “This greenhouse isn’t even on the schematic. I don’t know how much we can rely on it.”

 

“Let’s split up, then,” Leo says. “We can cover more ground and there doesn’t seem to be much opposition. We’ll get back together before we go upstairs. Keep an eye out for the vault, or any Prothean artifacts, while you go.”

 

“I don’t even know what a Prothean whatsit looks like,” Mikey complains.

 

Donnie’s drawing breath for an explanation, but Kasumi speaks first. “They tend to be green and glowy.”

 

Donnie looks vaguely outraged, but Mikey gives her a thumb’s-up. “Awesome, Kasumi! Super helpful.”

 

“Mikey, you’re with Kasumi and me anyway,” Leo says. “We’ll take left. Raph, Donnie, April, you go straight.”

 

They nod and part ways. The floor has a thick carpet that made it easy to move soundlessly. The whole place is expensively decorated—every room they look into to scan has real wood paneling and furniture, lush carpets, and is decorated in an assortment of valuables. Leo hears Kasumi sigh wistfully more than once, and resolves to keep an eye on her. There’s no sign of the artifact yet, though. Twice they run into pairs of mechs, both times dispatching them quickly. Once Kasumi gets off a tech attack before the mechs can do more than aim, and once Mikey knocks both of them to the ground before Leo and Kasumi finish them off.

 

“Did you keep leaving roses after you got that— advice?” Leo asks eventually, peering into a room with a grand piano but no sign of Prothean artifacts.

 

Kasumi chuckles, moving past him to the next doorway. “Of course not. Like I said, he was completely right.”

 

“What did you do afterward?”

 

“We became partners.” Her perpetual smile droops at the corners for a moment, but she brightens up again as she looks into the room. “Ooh, a library!”

 

“It probably doesn’t have the artifact,” Leo says as she moves through the doorway.

 

“But it has _books_ , Leonardo!”

 

“Books are not the reason we’re here!”

 

“ _Leo_ ,” says Mikey from across the hall, breathless. “You gotta come see this.”

 

Torn between two wayward team members, Leo wavers before heading after his brother. “Is it the artifact?”

 

“No!” Mikey’s turned the light on. “Look at it, Leo! This guy has _all the action figures ever!_ ”

 

That’s an exaggeration, but the room does, in fact, house a massive toy collection. The whole room is walled in glass display cases, with what must be hundreds of figures meticulously arranged. Mikey’s got his hands and face pressed into one of the cabinets. Leo winces. “Mikey, c’mon, this isn’t why we’re here.”

 

“But he’s got everything! And he’s not even here to enjoy it!”

 

“Mikey,” Leo sighs.

 

Mikey sidesteps to the next case, peers in, and then casts a sly look over his shoulder. “He’s got the limited edition Space Heroes figures from 2160.”

 

Leo grits his teeth. He’s better off not even looking at them. “ _Mikey._ Mission. Fate of the galaxy at stake.”

 

Mikey heaves an exaggerated sigh. “Fiiine.” He drags himself away. Leo takes a quick glance around. Nothing green and glowy—except for the Celestial figure, which glows in the dark when he switches the light off. He firmly turns his back.

 

Kasumi is waiting for them in the hallway, looking as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. Leo gives her a hard once-over, trying to figure out if her shape has changed at all. “What did you steal?”

 

“Nothing,” she says. “I just looked at the books. They’re _beautiful_ books, Leonardo.”

 

“I’m sure they are,” he sighs. It would be hard for her to hide a book in that suit—it certainly doesn’t _look_ like she’s concealing anything.

 

“It’s a very eclectic collection. Did you get yourself an action figure?”

 

Leo rolls his eyes. “No, because that would be stealing.” For a moment he thinks about the limited edition figures, but he shoves the thought away. There’s no need for that.

 

“We’re here to steal an artifact,” Kasumi points out, falling into step with him.

 

“For very good reason,” he says. “Not just for... personal gratification.”

 

“I told you he needs to lighten up a little,” Mikey says in an exaggerated whisper. Leo grits his teeth. The sentiment isn’t anything new, but idea of the two of them talking about him behind his back grates, and he’s not even sure why.

 

When he shoots them a glare, though, Kasumi is looking at him thoughtfully and gives him a smile that almost seems sympathetic. “I’m almost disappointed there isn’t more security,” she says. “Only one lock to hack so far.”

 

Mikey groans. “Kasumi, no no no, don’t say that, you are just _asking_ for something to go horribly wrong.”

 

Leo snorts, and Kasumi laughs, saying, “You’re right. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

 

All the same, Leo’s glad she changed the subject.

 

They meet up with the other half of the team at the wide staircase that goes up to the second floor. “Nothing,” Raph reports.

 

“Except the squad of security mechs we took out,” Donnie adds.

Raph rolls his eyes. “Nothing worth mentioning.”

 

Leo allows himself a half smile. “Up the stairs, then.”

 

The layout on the second floor is different. There’s one wide hallway that leads to a big room in the middle of the building. They split up to check the smaller rooms lining the hall, but there are no signs of what they’re looking for, so they proceed to the central room.

 

It has three additional exits, one on each side of the room. Two of those might go out to the exterior; Leo recalls seeing balconies when they were scouting. The room itself is all wood paneling surrounding a few large overstuffed chairs and polished end tables with books carelessly piled on them. Leo glances at Kasumi, but she only glances at the books briefly before turning her attention to the walls, her lips slightly pursed.

 

“What is it?” he asks.

 

“It would be easy to hide a compartment behind some of this paneling,” she says, running a gloved hand along one of the panels before activating her omni-tool. “The vault doesn’t have to look like a vault. It’s more secure if it doesn’t.”

 

“Good point.” Donnie brings up his own omni-tool. “But if we check the density of the wall behind the panels...”

 

Kasumi flashes a brief smile. “Exactly.”

 

Leo nods. “Okay, check it out. The rest of us can search the rest of the floor.”

 

They only get halfway down the corridor beyond the sitting room, checking the side rooms as they go, before April freezes. “We’re not alone.”

 

“What?” Leo reaches for his sword and takes a sharper look around. “Who? How many?”

 

April shakes her head, her lips pressed tight together. “More than one mind, in the house. I’m not sure how many.”

 

Leo casts a glance at the closed door at the end of the hall, trying to think. There are too many approaches in here, too much unexplored real estate, and the rest of the team is in a room with three other entrances. Decision made, he takes the hallway back toward the central room at a run.

 

“What’s wrong?” Donnie asks as he comes in, turning away from his scan of the wall.

 

“There’s someone else here,” says April.

 

“Have you got anything?” Leo asks. “We’ve got to find that vault, and fast.”

 

“Or we go take them out first,” Raph says.

 

“There’s something back here,” Kasumi says, pressing her hand against the wall in the corner. “I’m not sure it’s big enough, but it’s some kind of safe.”

 

Leo hesitates, thinking over their options, taking quick stock of each of the four doors. “I don’t like this. Let’s go see who our visitors are, and—”

 

“Never mind, I let myself in.”

 

The voice is all too familiar, silky smooth. Leo’s heart sinks. Oh, no. Why did it have to be her? She has such a knack for showing up at the worst possible time.

 

Off to his left, Raph growls under his breath, tensing, as Karai strolls into the room through the door they’d originally entered by. Leo’s busy cursing himself for the vulnerable position they’re in. They’re practically backed into a corner already, with Kasumi and April and Donnie behind him working on the safe, and himself and Mikey and Raph in a loose ring around the hackers. That’s all well and good, but they have nowhere to go. They should have moved faster, gotten the hell out of this room with its too many entrances.

 

“I heard you losers were running a little rebellion,” Karai says, as a half dozen of her ninja follow her into the room, fanning out on either side of her. “Imagine my surprise to find you engaged in some burglary.”

 

“What are you doing here, Karai?” Raph snarls.

 

She ignores him and looks at Leo with her old familiar smile, sharp and bright as a blade. Her eyes are cold, though, not a hint of friendliness, or regret. Even so, it pulls at his heart like an old scar. He’d heard the Foot had been engaging Reaper forces in the city as well, but they’d never approached any of his people. Not especially surprising, but he’d taken it as a silent agreement to stay out of each other’s way. Another miscalculation, maybe.

 

Karai appears perfectly at ease, hip cocked to the side and her hands loose and empty. He’s not going to be fooled by _that_ ; he knows how fast she can draw. She says, “Don’t you have a greeting for an old friend, Leo?”

 

Raph and Mikey are tense as springs on either side of him. Leo takes a breath, exerting every ounce of self-control. “We were never friends, Karai.”

 

“Weren’t we?” She tilts her head, her face catching the light. He hasn’t actually seen her in months, maybe even a year—seemed like she was out of New York for a while, probably dealing with Foot business elsewhere. She’s a busy woman, now that the Shredder is gone and she leads the Foot clan. The old softness has gone from her heart-shaped face; her jaw and cheekbones stand out more, angular. Her eyes are still bright and hard as amber, framed by dark make-up; there are angled stripes of red paint across her cheeks that she didn’t always wear. Her smile stretches. “That’s not what you used to say.”

 

_Breathe_ , he tells himself. Karai has always known how to get to him with unerring aim. Of course she was going to throw his old stupidity back in his face. It’s to be expected. He’d been young and in love with her, and he’d seen in her what he wanted to see. He’d been a fool. Whatever was between them then, they’re enemies now. “You showed me I was wrong about that.”

 

“Hmm.” Her eyes narrow and her gaze flicks to either side of him for a moment, as if looking for some reaction from his brothers. “Suppose you had to learn sometime,” she says, and her lip curls a little more. “Took you long enough.”

 

“Why are you here?” he says, refusing to be diverted.

 

She advances a couple of lazy steps. “I’m looking for something. But I’d guess you already know that.”

 

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he replies evenly.

 

Karai laughs, merry and unfettered. “You’re _such_ a bad liar, Leo. I’m amazed you managed to hide our little fling for so long.”

 

“Shut up,” Raph snarls, and Leo wants to smack him. _Don’t show her she’s getting to you, Raph, come on_.

 

“Let’s make this easy,” Karai says, smiling. “You let me leave with the object I want, and nobody has to get hurt.”

 

“You haven’t told me what it is that you want,” Leo points out, staying in a defensive position. Is it his imagination, or does he hear a faint _click_ coming from behind him?

 

“How about you let me leave with _whatever_ I want?” Her smile is almost playful, like it used to be, sometimes, in unguarded moments. Now it makes him think of a cat playing with its prey. Karai tilts her head to the side. “And just who is that behind you, Leo?”

 

“I think you know April,” he says.

 

Karai’s eyes narrow. “You know that’s not what I mean.”

 

He’s not sure why she cares; she has to be able to recognize Donnie and April on sight, so maybe she’s just concerned with who the remaining member of their party is? Either way, he doesn’t exactly hear the movement behind him, but he knows it’s taken place when Karai’s eyes slide sideways. They widen and then harden as the smile falls off her face. Her mouth tightens into a hard line. Her sword is in her hand in one swift moment. “ _Goto_? You freaks are hanging with _her_ now?”

 

“Long time, no see,” Kasumi says brightly. She sounds just as usual, her voice too light in the atmosphere of thickening tension. Karai’s ninja are readying for action; Leo keeps his eyes on the line of her shoulders and the blade in her hand.

 

“You know each other?” Raph says, sounding incredulous.

 

“ _Know_ is a little strong,” says Kasumi.

 

“She’s a thief, and she took what’s rightfully mine,” Karai snarls.

 

Kasumi continues as if Karai hadn’t spoken. “... but we’ve met, and she wants me dead.”

 

“That’s the best recommendation I’ve heard yet,” Raph mutters.

 

Kasumi laughs, a sound like ringing bells, jarring in the silence. Karai’s eyes narrow.

 

“Deal’s off,” she says, lifting her free hand in a signal. “I don’t deal with honorless thieves.”

 

The doors on either side of the room burst open.

 

This is more or less what Leo was expecting. Fishface is on one side, and Alopex on the other, each followed by four rank-and-file Foot ninja. Also not unexpected, but the sight makes him grimace. Fishface is an old, familiar enemy, who transferred his loyalty easily from Shredder to Karai. As for Alopex, none of them know where the mutant fox came from, but she’s been Karai’s right hand ever since she came back to New York to take control of the Foot a decade ago.

 

Everyone moves at once. Leo shouts, “Mikey, take Alopex, Raph—” even as he’s rushing forward to meet Karai’s charge.

 

“Got it, bro,” Mikey calls back, and Raph shouts, “I _know_ , Leo,” as the two of them break right and left. Mikey darts to intercept Alopex, a white streak amid the black-clad Foot ninja, while Raph runs to meet Fishface, going in low in an attempt to knock him off his robotic legs. That works about half the time. Leo can see Donnie and April in his peripheral vision, as well, Donnie taking down three of the Foot with a sweep of his staff.

 

Leo’s focus rapidly narrows, though. He has to sidestep to meet Karai, because for once she’s trying to get _past_ him, not _to_ him. “Get out of my way, Leo,” she growls, her eyes locked just past his shoulder.

 

“Not a chance,” he snaps back. Their swords meet with the screech of steel on steel. He can just see Kasumi dart out from behind him before she disappears. Karai transfers her attention to him. He dodges back out of the way of her kick, leaving her and her weapon free, just as Kasumi re-appears behind Karai, the glowing orange blade made by her omni-tool aimed at the weak spot in Karai’s armor where the shoulder joins the back. Karai whirls, blocking the blade with her own before aiming her elbow at Kasumi’s face. Kasumi jerks out of the way, arching backward and turning the motion into a flip that clears ground between her and Karai. She just barely misses being clobbered by Raph and Fishface as they roll across the room, grappling. Karai goes after Kasumi again as soon as she has a clear path. Leo follows, calling her name, but she ignores him, keeping her focus on Kasumi.

 

It’s a little bit astounding to watch. The two women are fast and flow around each other like water. Leo can tell right away that Kasumi’s objective is to get in close, too close for Karai to use her sword effectively; the omni-blade is shorter than the katana, forcing Kasumi to close. But while she’s there, she hits hard, quick strikes with her fist or knee or elbow. Karai returns the favor, though, and doesn’t hesitate to use the hilt of her sword since she doesn’t have room to make best use of the blade.

 

The Foot rank and file are hurling themselves at Leo, slowing him down as he tries to intercept Karai, forcing him to cut his way through them. The rest of the fight is moving just as fast; the others are blurs of green in his peripheral vision, against Fishface’s red and Alopex’s white. He thinks Donnie’s moving in to help Mikey, having cleared out a cluster of the Foot, when April cries out.

 

Leo glances in her direction and something hits him hard from behind. He turns his forward stagger into a roll and comes back up, pivoting to face whatever hit him.

 

There’s nothing there.

 

He spins around to keep an eye on Karai, who’s still going at it with Kasumi—in fact, she falls backward herself as Kasumi kicks her in the gut. Karai’s only staggered for a moment before she lunges forward, snarling. A sudden sense of danger makes Leo whirl again, slashing at what appears to be air in front of him.

 

There’s something there, all right. His sword clangs into something hard, which pushes back. He tries to focus on the motion, the sensation, instead of the nothing he’s seeing; closes his eyes for a second and presses, freeing his sword with a twist and then advancing. There’s the unmistakable feeling of the blade penetrating flesh, and when he opens his eyes, there’s a figure flickering into visibility in front of him, masked and garbed in gray rather than the Foot’s black.

 

Now that he can _see_ his opponent, she’s not really a match for him. She’s fast, but not as skilled, so Leo can spare a fraction of his attention to scan the room and wonder how many more of them there are. A lot, potentially; it looks like April’s facing off against one, and Mikey suddenly staggers sideways, hit by something neither he nor Leo can see. “Cloaked enemies,” Leo calls out. “Watch out, guys—”

 

His opponent’s arm flings out. Leo dodges on reflex and then curses out loud at the sharp whine of a flashbang grenade going off. The room swims in fragments of color, and he drops into a defensive crouch, swords up in front of him since he can’t see his enemies. He tries to use his ears instead, but there’s a lot of grunts and thuds as people hit each other and crash into furniture. Leo squeeze his eyes shut and tries to focus.

 

A whisper of movement in front of him, a faint rustle. Leo lunges, feels the solidity of flesh against his blade again, and when he opens his eyes, the gray-clad woman is falling in front of him.

 

His vision is starting to clear. There’s a crackling, the familiar sound of some tech overloading, and suddenly the room is full: full of people in gray. Their original odds? A dozen Foot, besides Karai, Fishface, and Alopex? That they could handle.

 

Now there are a lot more than a dozen.

 

Leo surveys the room in dismay. April is facing one of the now-visible ninja, who raises her right hand and— fires off a beam weapon, somehow, that misses April but leaves a black mark on the wood panels behind her. April dodges that shot, only to have another one grab her from behind, tangling the arm she’s holding her _tessen_ in. Donnie’s been backed into a corner by three of them. Mikey, too, has gotten tied up with a cluster of the gray ones, allowing Alopex to slip free...

 

... and between them she and Fishface have Raph face-down on the floor, one of Fishface’s big metal feet on his back. The fox catches Leo’s eye and bends, gracefully, laying her claws against Raph’s neck. “Drop your weapons,” she calls out, voice harsh in the room.

 

Everyone goes still, except April, still struggling against her captor.

 

“Leo! Don’t!” Raph manages to turn his head enough to glare at Leo from across the room. “Don’t let them—” he stops short as Alopex’s claws dig in.

 

“Drop your weapons,” she says, “or I slice his throat and you can watch him bleed out.”

 

“You’d better do as she says,” Fishface puts in, pressing down.

 

“Thought you wanted to kill him yourself,” Leo says, his heart pounding. Sacrifice the artifact, or sacrifice his brother. There has to be another way. As his eyes flick to the side, though, he can see that there are more of the gray-clad ninjas pressing into the room, from every entrance. His team is severely outnumbered.

 

Fishface smiles, his mouth stretching wide, showing off his fangs. “I will cede that privilege to my lovely associate.”

 

Alopex laughs, an odd barking sound.

 

“Let me make this simpler for you,” Karai says, stalking around the perimeter of the room. The gray ninja part silently before her, allowing her to approach the four holding on to Mikey. She kicks Raph in the side as she passes, right in the exposed spot under the arm, and smiles as she presses the tip of her blade to Mikey’s throat. “Drop your weapons, all of you, or in three seconds you lose two brothers. Three.”

 

Leo casts one more look around the room. Kasumi’s to his right and a little behind, her left arm still up—she must have activated the pulse that disabled the ninjas’ cloaks. She and he are the only members of their team unencumbered, though. Donnie could get himself free quickly enough, but April’s caught in a hard hold, and then there’s Raph and Mikey...

 

“Two,” says Karai.

 

“Fine,” Leo says, sets his weapons on the floor, and pushes them away. He can hear Donnie, April, and Kasumi doing the same.

 

They’re not out of it yet, even as the gray ninja move in on them. He allows them to push him into a kneeling position, though his jaw tightens when Karai makes a gesture and the two holding on to him yank his arms behind him to bind his wrists. His shell doesn’t accommodate this position comfortably. Donnie, April, and Mikey are being pushed into similar positions.

 

Well, this is worse, but it’s not _impossible_ ; he’s still got small knives concealed in his wrist wraps, so if he can just work one free, he can work on the cord tying him. There are still options, if not good ones, and he tries to ignores Raph’s glare.

 

“Here’s how this is going to work,” Karai says, moving gracefully across the room. “I was going to just blow up the lock, but now I see I have options. So Goto here is going to open that vault and give me the artifact. I’m going to leave with it. If she behaves herself and does her job fast, the rest of you get to live. If not, only some of you get to live. Or none of you. I haven’t decided yet.”

 

“And me?” Kasumi asks. Her voice is steady, and when Leo manages to twist around to get a glance at her, he sees that she’s not smiling now, her mouth set in a straight, even line.

 

Karai comes to face her and smiles. She reaches out and plants a finger on Kasumi’s chest. “You’ll be coming with me, thief.”

 

“You realize you’re not getting that ridiculous armor back no matter what you do to me,” Kasumi says. She still sounds remarkably calm.

 

Karai’s smile widens, just a little. “That’s not the point,” she says, almost gently.

 

“The point is torture just for kicks? How banal,” Kasumi says.

 

Leo’s pulse is pounding. Kasumi could refuse, now, and the Foot would certainly kill at least one or two of them before he could do anything about it. Or she could help, and they might not be able to get free before Karai takes her away. Or...

 

Or, there’s a chance he’s made a mistake, a chance he and Shepard both did. Karai came here in force. She knew they’d be here. If Kasumi is really her ally, and not her enemy, this could all be an elaborate ploy—Karai could end up leaving with Kasumi and the artifact, and they’d have to go to the trouble of tracking her down. It’s a tenuous thought, but this thing has gone so thoroughly wrong that they might just have been sold out, after all.

 

Even if she’s not a traitor, he has no idea what she’s going to do.

 

There’s also the question of why Karai wants the thing at all, of course—probably not for herself, which means she’s working for someone, and she got the cloaking tech from somewhere—

 

“Karai, you don’t want to do this.” He knows he sounds desperate. “The fate of the galaxy could be at stake—”

 

Karai whirls and takes a step, and now the point of her blade hovers in front of his eyes. “Quiet, Leo, or I’ll cut your tongue out.” She smiles. “Which would be a shame.”

 

His face heats. Karai smiles wider, her eyes narrowing. “You idiots still think you can win,” she says, in a mild, conversational tone. “That’s almost cute. Stupid, but cute.”

 

“You’d rather just let the Reapers win?” he retorts.

 

“What did I just say?” Karai inquires, her sword inching closer. “Besides, it’s not your choice now. It’s Goto’s.” She steps back, taking the weapon with her. “What’ll it be, thief? Make up your mind, now.”


	7. Chapter 7

With Karai’s ultimatum still hanging in the air, Kasumi glances around the room. All her allies are temporarily incapacitated, and vulnerable to the enemy. But they’re all conscious, at least, so that’s something to work with. She has her omni-tool, and a couple of flashbangs in her belt, along with a small knife. She’s willing to wager her companions are also carrying concealed weapons. Careless of Karai not to have them searched, but then she appears quite enthralled with the little scenario she’s set up here. Better she stay that way, focused on how she can punish Kasumi for her misdeeds and not on what her captives are doing.

 

Karai watches Kasumi with hooded eyes, a hard smile on her face. She still has her sword pointed at Leonardo, but she’s backed off so it’s no longer within a few inches of his face. For his part, Leonardo looks back at Kasumi as if he’s trying to beam her a message with his eyes. She can’t read his expression, though—a mixture of trepidation and she’s not sure what else. She wishes they knew each other a little better, so they could manage some kind of signal. She’s not going to sacrifice anyone’s life if she can help it, but he doesn’t know that.

 

She puts on a smile, the best she can do at this moment, and looks back at Karai. “Fine. Whatever you want.”

 

“What are you waiting for?” Karai says, jerking her head toward the corner. “Get to it.”

 

Kasumi complies.

 

She’d managed to get the paneling off before, but behind the sober wood lay an up-to-date, high-tech vault with an electronic lock. Kasumi can hack into it; it’ll just take time.

 

Time is what she needs. She has to spin this out as long as possible, buy some time for her enemies to get bored and her allies to work. She needs to think of a way to even the odds in their favor, to create an opportunity for the rest of the team to act. She can use her omni-tool for that, since Karai hasn’t seen fit to confiscate it, but that’ll take time—probably more time than hacking the lock. She needs to slow things down, and she needs to do it before Karai gets impatient enough to start following through on her threats. Somehow Kasumi needs to look like she’s hacking the lock while she’s actually preparing an attack.

 

Well. She always did like a challenge. It’s going to be an interesting exercise in sleight of hand.

 

She also needs to hope her allies can recognize and take advantage of the opening she’ll provide. She’s not _too_ worried about that, but it’s not as if they know each other that well.

 

She casts one last swift glance over her shoulder. Donatello and Michelangelo are watching the guards themselves, their posture tense. Raphael is glaring at Leonardo, who has returned to watching Karai. April meets Kasumi’s eyes across the room before returning a wary glance to her own captors. Kasumi marks all their locations in her mind, and brings up her omni-tool. As her fingers move over the interface, she wonders if she should be flattered that Karai’s so clearly carrying a grudge. For Kasumi, stealing the Foot Clan’s ceremonial armor a couple years back was simply a job—a well-paid one, and an interesting challenge, but not personal. She’d heard Oroku Karai had it in for her since then, but she’d had too much on her mind since then to care.

 

Today, it’s starting to feel personal. Not just by Karai’s animosity toward Kasumi; the whole room feels charged. The way Karai treated Kasumi’s allies—especially Leonardo—cuts close to the bone. Karai’s not simply countering a threat; she’s trying to hurt, to muddle, to lacerate. Kasumi finds she doesn’t much like it. They are clearly old adversaries, though; there’s some kind of history there. Kasumi wonders how far back it goes, and how deep. It’s difficult to imagine any entanglement between the two groups that could have ended well.

 

Other people’s old business is hardly the most important thing for her to think about, though. Kasumi times her movements carefully, walking a fine line: she’s going a little slower than she would normally go, but not slow enough to make Karai suspicious. She activates a couple of the cracking programs on her omni-tool, but sets them to run more slowly than usual. She also brings up another little program with a quite different purpose. Out loud, she inquires, “So how long have you been working with Cerberus?”

 

“Less talk, more hacking,” Karai replies.

 

“I can multitask,” Kasumi says. “I just can’t help but notice that your little helpers here seem to be outfitted with Cerberus tech.” She’s not only seen Shepard’s reports, but she’s encountered the ones the Alliance troops call Phantoms on a couple of her runs for the Crucible team. They’re in different colors here, but she recognizes the palm-mounted cannons, along with the swords and the tactical cloaks.

 

“Mind your own business,” Karai says shortly.

 

Kasumi decides to take that as confirmation.

 

Across the room, April says, sounding a little breathless, “Karai, what are you doing with Cerberus? They’re just complicating the war effort, and—”

 

Karai cuts her off. “This whole war is a farce, O’Neil. The Reapers can’t be beaten, not like this.”

 

“How, then?” April demands. Kasumi silently cheers the other woman on for taking the lead she provided and running with it. She also takes advantage of the distraction to slip one of her two flashbangs out of her belt and alter its programming. She listens, carefully, but the Phantoms nearest her show no signs that they noticed.

 

Karai laughs at April’s question. “Like I’m going to tell you.”

 

April laughs in her turn, an unexpectedly hard sound. “You don’t even know anything, do you? You’re just a Cerberus hireling. You’re not exactly in on the master plan, are you?”

 

“Goto.” Karai’s voice has a cold edge. “How’s that lock coming?”

 

“It’s a complicated lock,” Kasumi says. “It’ll take some time.” Actually, her program is getting through the layers of security a little faster than she’d like. She did a lot of unnecessary contingency planning for more esoteric defenses. Disappointing. She considers slowing the program down a little more, but—

 

“Alopex, watch him.”

 

Kasumi glances over her shoulder to see the fox woman taking over Karai’s place near Leonardo, while Karai herself strides toward Kasumi. Figures. Looks like Kasumi’s just run out of time. Well. At least that means both of Karai’s lieutenants aren’t watching Raphael. She can use this to their advantage.

 

Karai lays a hand on Kasumi’s shoulder, her grip tight. “Get that lock open and stop _stalling_ , Goto.”

 

“Yes, I think it’s time,” Kasumi says, spinning. She squeezes her eyes shut, as tight as she can, shoves the regular flashbang grenade that she just swiped from her belt into Karai’s face, and detonates it.

 

Kasumi doesn’t _quite_ manage to shield herself from the blast; it stings her face, and she can see the glow of the flash through her eyelids, and her eyes are watering when she forces them open. Karai staggers back, though, clutching her face with both hands, dropping her sword, and leaving Kasumi free to move. She uses that freedom to fling the other grenade, the one she introduced her second program into, toward the center of the room. Good thing she’s been chatting with EDI about Cerberus countermeasures, isn’t it? It’s nice to keep in touch with old friends, especially when the friend in question is an AI who specializes in electronic warfare.

 

When the altered flashbang goes off, the Phantoms shriek in unison, a hair-raising pitch that’s part electronic static, part human agony. Their hands glow red as the cannons mounted there overheat. Sparks actually fly from the ones closest to the detonation, and several of them collapse or freeze in place, seized by tremors.

 

Her allies, as Kasumi hoped, take only a second to take advantage. Leonardo somehow has his hands free and dives toward his swords, turning the movement into a graceful forward roll as he moves to attack Alopex. Michelangelo doesn’t need his hands free to slam the fish mutant off his mechanical feet with a biotic blast, which allows Raphael to spring to his feet and follow up the attack. Kasumi registers all that even through her blurred vision, although she only sees April and Donatello moving, not what they do. “Finish the Phantoms! They’re down but not out!” she calls, and then she has to devote her attention to Karai.

 

Going toe to toe with a notorious kunoichi was not on Kasumi’s to-do list for the day, but sometimes life gives you surprises. She needs to deal with this while Karai is still reeling and trying vainly to shield her eyes. Kasumi slams her elbow into Karai’s throat, fast, follows up with a knee to the join of her thigh and hip, where her armor is weaker, and starts to spin away. She triggers her tac cloak automatically, but nothing happens; the pulse that took down the Phantoms must have knocked out her omni-tool, too. Temporarily, she hopes.

 

She has to adjust her step to avoid tripping over a Phantom sprawled on the floor, though, and that gives Karai an opening to grab her left arm. Kasumi throws up her other arm to block the hit that follows, but the two of them are entangled now. She might be able to ward off Karai’s left arm, but she can’t seem to twist her own left out of the other woman’s tight grasp. She could go for the small blade at her belt with her right hand, but she’d be leaving herself open to Karai’s strikes if she did. Stalemate. Kasumi tries bringing up her knee again, but Karai’s ready for that this time. She can hear noise behind her, crashes and thumps and somebody snarling.

 

“Karai! The safe!”

 

It’s the fish mutant’s voice, rough and desperate. Kasumi lets her eyes flick to the side, risky as that is, and realizes with a certain shock what he means.

 

The safe is open.

 

Oh, _hell._ The electronic pulse must have blown the lock, too. That was _not_ what Kasumi intended. She’ll have to talk to EDI about that. She looks at Karai, who’s looking back at her—her eyes are reddened and watering, but her vision must be coming back in spite of it. She gives Kasumi a twisted smile and shoves.

 

Kasumi was prepared for a lot of things, but not that. The push sends her falling backwards. Her feet slide out from under her as she lands on her left elbow and something lumpy, probably the damned Phantom. Karai, meanwhile, only has to sidestep to reach the safe in the wall. Kasumi can only glimpse a jumble of objects—very careless storage, that—but Karai doesn’t hesitate as she reaches in.

 

“Oh, no you don’t!”

 

Kasumi’s still on the floor, scrambling for the Phantom’s weapon, as she feels the weird rush that comes with biotics pass over her head. Michelangelo’s suddenly _there_ , crashing into Karai, who hits the wall hard and slides down it with a grunt. Michelangelo turns a bold, sunny grin on Kasumi, saying, “Green and glowy, right? Only one of those,” as he reaches into the vault.

 

“Wait!” Kasumi shouts, a sudden memory flashing through her brain, but she can’t get off the floor in time to intercept him. Instead, she gets a close-up as the green glow brightens and he stiffens into an unnaturally rigid posture.

 

“ _Mikey!_ ”

 

Several voices shout at once—all three of his brothers at once, she thinks. Kasumi does manage to scramble to her feet just in time to grab Leonardo’s arm before he gets past her. “Wait! Don’t! Interfering could hurt both of you!”

 

He stops, but his teeth are bared and the eyes that glance toward her are white. The muscle in her grip is taut. “What is it? What’s it doing to him?”

 

“It’s like what happened to Shepard,” she says. She can almost hear Shepard’s voice in her ears, telling her the story, one leisurely night over drinks—how the damaged beacon had caught her in its grip and imprinted its contents onto her brain. “It’s the Prothean device— transmitting information, or something.”

 

The glow fades, and Michelangelo collapses to the floor. Leonardo makes a move toward him, then raises one blade and lunges toward Karai, who’s just hauling herself up from the floor. “Don’t move,” he tells her. “Donnie, I need you over here.”

 

Kasumi glances over her shoulder. Most of the Phantoms are down, although a few are still moving, jerkily and feebly. Raphael has a grip on the fish man, though his attention has shifted to his fallen brother, and the fish slips out of his grip. Alopex, tail swishing, blocks a long swing from Donatello that leaves her open to April coming in at her flank, and she yelps as the fan strikes, leaving a scarlet gash in her white fur. “Little busy over here,” Donatello calls.

 

Kasumi steps forward instead—she can at least check Michelangelo’s pulse, though it looks like he’s breathing—but before she can, Karai snaps, “Screw this. Alopex, Xever, come.” She drops something, and a puff of dark smoke erupts, forcing Leonardo and Kasumi to step back, coughing. Kasumi hears Xever utter a dry laugh, saying, “Sure thing, boss,” and whirls to find that Karai’s lieutenants have done the same, each of the three making for the closest exit. A couple of the Phantoms try to follow them, their limbs jerking.

 

Kasumi casts a wary eye around, but none of the Phantoms seem about to jump up and renew the attack. Leonardo sighs and sheathes his weapons, dropping to one knee next to Michelangelo. “Kasumi, can you secure the artifact?”

 

“What, we’re just going to let them go?” Raphael demands.

 

“Yes,” Leonardo bites out. “We have an objective here, and it’s not Karai. And we have to get Mikey home.”

 

Raphael wavers for a moment before grumbling, “Okay,” and approaching. Donatello has already made his way over to check his brother’s vital signs, dropping to one knee.

 

April says quietly, “Shepard was unconscious for hours. It could be a while.”

 

“We’ll have to carry him, then,” Leonardo says. He’s trying to be brisk and efficient, but there are visible worry lines across his forehead. “Kasumi?”

 

“Right.” She shakes herself. “I brought along something for the job.” She steps delicately around them toward the safe. Her back and knee already ache; once the adrenalin wears off, she’s going to be sore.

 

“I can’t find any injuries, he’s just out,” Donatello says. “He seems stable enough to move.”

 

“All right, let’s get him up,” Leonardo says.

 

“ _Guys._ ” April’s voice is sharp. “ _Bomb_.”

 

“What?” They all whirl. It takes Kasumi a moment to spot the object April’s pointing toward, something either Xever or Alopex must have left as a parting gift.

 

“How much time have we got?” Leonardo asks.

 

April, the closest, takes a look. “Timer says just over a minute.”

 

“I can try to defuse it—” Donatello starts up.

 

Leonardo shakes his head. “Just get Mikey out of here. Kasumi, the artifact!”

 

Raphael’s already hauling Michelangelo off the floor; with Donatello’s help, the three of them are hustling off toward the stairs. Kasumi collects herself and reaches for the bag she’d secured in a pocket of her suit. It folds down to nearly nothing, but the material it’s made of can unfold and stretch to encompass almost anything. She always carries several, just on principle. The Prothean artifact’s glow has gone dim. It’s probably safe to touch, but Kasumi avoids it, even with her gloved fingers, working the bag around it as quickly as she can without making contact. It’s taking more time than she’d like, the seconds ticking down in her head as she manipulates the cloth. Behind her, Leonardo tells April to go with his brothers and take point, and Kasumi can hear her running out of the room.

 

“Have you got it?” he says a moment later.

 

“Yes.” Kasumi finishes wrapping the bag around the artifact and seals the top of it shut, casts one longing glance at the other items in the safe—this seems to have been where the building’s owner kept his most unusual antiquities and curiosities—and turns to go. They dash across the room, trying not to trip over the downed Phantoms and overturned furniture. The clock in Kasumi’s head is getting uncomfortably close to zero. Once they reach the corridor leaving the room, they break into a run. The stairs at the end of the hall are in sight, but it’s still going to be too close. Kasumi’s preparing to duck into a roll and throw herself flat, but Leonardo reaches out and seizes her arm, pulls her tight against himself, her back to his chest, ducking low—

 

The force of the explosion is a shock, even when she’s expecting it. It knocks the pair of them off their feet, and they end up tumbling down the stairs, a series of awkward thuds, but Leonardo never loses his grip on her. His arms are like steel bars keeping her safely tucked against him, even as they roll down the stairs. They crash to the floor in a heap. Kasumi finds herself blinking dazedly at the ceiling. “Good thing the stairs are carpeted,” she says. “That’s going to leave a mark anyway.”

 

She can’t quite hear her own voice; her ears feel— blank, deafened by the noise of the explosion. Leonardo’s hold on her has gone loose. Kasumi winces and manages to roll off him, out of his slackened grasp. “Leonardo,” she says, pointlessly, because his hearing’s probably as toasted as hers. She tries again anyway. “ _Leo_.” Why stand on formality when you’ve just escaped a bomb blast together, after all? She leans over, stiffly, bracing herself with one hand, and pats his shoulder—there’s a scrape on the outside of his arm, bleeding sluggishly, but it looks superficial—before pressing her fingers against his neck in search of a pulse.

 

His eyes flicker open then, his face screwing up into a grimace, and he coughs. They’re both covered in dust, and there’s a scattering of debris down the steps, all that luxurious wooden paneling reduced to splinters. Useless though it is, Kasumi asks, “You okay?” and gives his shoulder a light squeeze, smiling.

 

He pushes himself up on his elbows, wincing, and turns a sharp look in her direction. His mouth moves, probably his own query. Kasumi smiles brightly in answer and leans back, resting on her knees. She spreads out her hands, a little _ta-da_ to show off that she’s fine, and then holds out the bag with its artifact, safely clutched in her arms the whole time. She’ll have to check the other pack, the one with the books she liberated, later; it’s nice and flat and adheres to her back, the polymer bag attaching to and mimicking the surface of her bodysuit. It should be all right, but she’ll take a look later.

 

Leonardo looks relieved at the sight of the bag and smiles a crooked, weary smile. Kasumi grins back, tucking the bagged artifact under her arm and brushing dust of her shoulders and hood. He starts to get up, and she follows suit. There’s an ache in her back and her legs that’s going to hurt like hell in the morning. A hot shower is in order. A long one. She watches her companion, relieved to see that he gets to his feet without noticeable difficulty—no breaks or other major injuries, then—but she winces when he turns around. There are a number of pits and gouges in his shell, and she thinks she can see something actually embedded. She reaches toward it, thinks better of it, and touches his arm instead. He looks down at her questioningly, and she points at the damage, but he shakes his head, saying something that might be “later.” Kasumi nods and steps back.

 

Her hearing is just barely starting to come back, a tinny roaring in her ears, as the two of them start walking back the way the came. They don’t get far before they run into April, whose tight, worried expression blossoms into a smile when she sees them. She throws her arms around Leonardo, obviously talking a mile a minute, and he shakes his head, pointing toward the side of it. April nods in understanding. To Kasumi’s surprise, she turns and catches Kasumi in a swift hug as well before turning back and leading them to rejoin the others. Kasumi tries not to limp as they go, keeping a tight grip on the Prothean artifact in her hands.


	8. Chapter 8

Once they get back to the lair (a long, cold, stiff walk), Donatello takes charge of everyone’s medical care with an efficient bossiness that, Kasumi imagines, would make Dr. Chakwas smile. Most of them are quickly deemed to have only minor injuries: a couple of stitches here and there, a few ice packs and painkillers get handed out.

 

Most of attention is devoted to Leonardo and Michelangelo. The former attempts to escape the lab, until Raphael blocks his path, so Leonardo sits with a long-suffering expression, waiting for Donatello to be ready to deal with him.

 

He’s more focused, for the moment, on Mikey. Kasumi has been finding it more and more difficult to think of the most cheerful of the brothers by his full name, and he looks especially pathetic now, propped in a chair and insisting it’s not that bad. To everyone’s relief, he started to regain consciousness before they got back to the lair, though he was pretty dazed at the time.

 

“My head just kinda hurts,” he’s saying now, as Donatello and April take turns peering into his eyes. “Ow, Donnie, turn the light off.”

 

“Will Michelangelo be all right?” Splinter asks from where he stands behind April. The rat looms, hands folded over a walking stick, keen eyes worried.

 

“Everything looks normal,” Donatello says, frowning dubiously.

 

“But what? Don’t look at me like that, Donnie, you’re making me think I’m gonna die or something!” Somehow he manages to make his blue eyes round and extra piteous. Kasumi bites her lip to keep from laughing.

 

Donatello heaves a sigh. “No, but you got exposed to something weird, and not for the first time, either, and now you’re trying to get me _not_ to fuss over you, which is not your usual MO. And I don’t exactly have the equipment to do complicated neural scans here.”

 

“It’s not that big a deal,” Mikey protests, but he’s frowning and rubbing his head.

 

April asks, carefully, “Did you see anything?”

 

“Yeah, I— nothing really made sense.”

 

“What did you see?”

 

“It was all, like, flashes.” He frowns some more. “Like, there was a big mushroom-looking thing, but metal, and one time I was looking at a map of the galaxy, and it was covered with colored dots, and— I dunno. Nothing was clear.”

 

“It didn’t have any strong emotional content?” April asks.

 

He shakes his head. “No. Just flashes and colors and stuff.”

 

“Can I—?” says April, and at his nod, closes her eyes.

 

Kasumi watches with her head cocked, puzzled. There’s nothing visibly happening, while Donatello frowns and taps his foot on the floor and Splinter watches with an inscrutable expression. After a moment, April opens her eyes, shaking her head. “I can’t get anything.”

 

“Shepard was fine once she came to,” Kasumi ventures to add, and when they all look at her, adds, “or so she said.”

 

Donatello sighs. “Well, I can’t find anything wrong—”

 

“I told you, my head just hurts.”

 

“—so let’s say aspirin and rest and let’s see what happens.”

 

“And ice cream?” Michelangelo looks pathetically from April to his brother.

 

Splinter snorts. “I think he will be fine.” He briefly rests a hand on Mikey’s shoulder and then retreats.

 

April chuckles. “Sure, I’ll get you some ice cream.” She nudges Donatello with her elbow as she rises from her seat. “Go hover over Leo.”

 

He nods and crosses to the other side of the lab.

 

That leaves Kasumi as the only one in Mikey’s vicinity, so she drifts closer and takes a seat.

 

“We’re kinda rationing the ice cream,” he explains. “’Cause it’s hard to get more.”

 

“Sensible,” she says. “Listen, I’m sorry I didn’t warn you in time.”

 

He shrugs, with a sheepish smile. “It’s okay. I, uh, I kinda touch a lot of stuff I’m not supposed to, anyway.”

 

“Me too,” says Kasumi, and they grin at each other.

 

She glances across the lab, where Donatello and Leonardo are talking; Donatello is looking over his brother’s back with a frown. No one else is here, so she says quietly, “Seems like you guys have a history with Karai and the Foot.”

 

Mikey’s grin falters and fades. “Um, yeah, it’s, uh... it’s complicated. Like, she’s the Shredder’s daughter, sort of, and he always wanted us dead—but mostly Sensei, cause of some ancient revenge thing— but she and Leo sort of had a thing for a while anyway, and then she left town, and we finally killed the Shredder so he would stop trying to kill us, and then Karai came back and was really mad, so... yeah.”

 

“That _is_ complicated,” Kasumi says, her eyebrows rising as she tries to make sense of that story.

 

“Oh, that’s only like half of it, but I don’t think I should talk about it,” he says, eyes shifting away.

 

“That’s okay,” Kasumi says. She’s intensely curious as to what the _rest_ of it is, but she knows better than to push her luck.

 

April comes back in then with a bowl of ice cream for Mikey, and Kasumi slips away for that long, hot shower.

 

#

 

 _Plink_.

 

 _Clink_.

 

“You know I’m going to have to coat your entire carapace in disinfectant,” Donnie says, and Leo’s pretty sure his brother isn’t actually a sadist, but the tone of practiced cheer might tell him otherwise.

 

“I know,” he says through gritted teeth. It’s too bad, really, that the ringing in his ears has dissipated to the point where he can hear every piece of shrapnel Donnie’s digging out of his shell, as well as feeling it; somehow hearing each bit of wood or metal clink into the jar makes it that much worse.

 

 _Plink_. “Need I remind you that our shells, while durable, are really not intended to be used as a shield against explosions?”

 

“I think you just did,” Leo mutters. _Clink_.

 

“Shall I give you the rest of the lecture on being self-sacrificing again, or—”

 

“No, you can spare it this time.”

 

“Really?” _Clink_. “Because—” Leo has to exercise every ounce of restraint to stay still, because _fuck_ but Donnie seems to be digging around deep for the next one. “—it doesn’t seem to have _sunk in_.” _Plink_.

 

It’s not the first time Donnie’s had to do this, and it probably won’t be the last, but there is a hell of a lot of debris lodged in his back this time. Their shells are tough but not invulnerable, and certainly not insensitive.

 

The alternatives to taking injuries to the shell are sometimes worse, though. “She’s human and doesn’t have a shell,” he says. “You’d do the same thing for April and you know it.”

 

There’s a pause in the repetitive motions happening above him, just long enough to let him realize what a horrible tactical error he’s made, and then Donnie digs in again and says calmly, “Wasn’t aware that Kasumi was your girlfriend, Leo.”

 

At least, face-down, he can hide his grimace. “She’s not, of course she’s not, but she’s an ally, and I’d do the same thing for April, too, or Casey, even—”

 

Donnie snorts. “Yeah, I’m sure Casey’s touched by that.” _Clink_.

 

Leo holds his breath for more teasing, or more of a lecture, but neither is forthcoming, just a couple more _plinks_ , and then Donnie says, “Okay, I think I got it all. Disinfectant wash next, and then I want to plug a couple of the deeper ones, okay?”

 

“Fine.”

 

He has to hold himself still again and clenches his teeth against yelling, because the stuff _burns_ as it seeps into every puncture from the shrapnel and the cracks between his scutes.

 

“You know, it’s okay if you swear,” Donnie says. “Raph always swears a blue streak.”

 

“Raph and profanity have a much closer _ow sonofa—_ ”

 

Donnie only chuckles as Leo gives up and lets the string of profanity fly. “Studies indicate it’s cathartic,” he says matter-of-factly. “Releases pent-up emotions in a harmless way, enhances endorphin production.”

 

“Great,” Leo says, panting and feeling utterly wrung-out. Not just from Donnie’s efforts at treatment, but from the whole night. Karai, with her cold smile, with her words sharper than her blades, who could have killed them all—again. Sometimes it feels as though he’s never going to be done with that chapter of his life, with mistakes that he made over a decade ago. He sighs, “I could use some endorphins.”

 

“Couldn’t we all,” Donnie says dryly. There is a little more pressure, but the sterile sealant Donnie uses, mercifully, doesn’t hurt. “Okay, there you are. All done.”

 

Somewhat to Leo’s surprise, Donnie offers him a hand as he levers himself up into a sitting position. He accepts, only to find once he’s upright that Donnie’s giving him an unusually penetrating look. “You should get some rest.”

 

“I just need to check in with Casey and get his report—” Leo makes to slide off the exam table, but Donnie’s grip tightens on his hand.

 

“It can probably wait until morning.”

 

“I’d rather know what’s going on now,” Leo says. “It’ll only take a few minutes.”

 

“Uh huh, and then there totally won’t be five more things you think you need to do right away,” says Donnie, not letting go. “Casey will tell you if it’s important, Leo.”

 

“That’s why I want to talk to him,” Leo replies, starting to get irritated.

 

“Look, I just—” Donnie frowns back at Leo’s stare, and finally releases his hand. “You’re always talking about how we can’t do anyone any good if we wear ourselves out, and that goes for you, too, you know.”

 

Leo sighs, irritation giving way to a hint of shame. He doesn’t want to worry anyone, especially Donnie, who’s got enough on his plate. He softens his tone when he answers. “I’ve got it covered. Don’t worry about me, you’ve got enough to do.”

 

“ _I’m_ okay,” Donnie says. “You’re the one who looks half dead most of the time.”

 

Leo blinks, suddenly and surprisingly put out at the thought. “I do not.”

 

Donnie crosses his arms. “How would you even know?”

 

“Are you saying you don’t think I can handle it?” It comes out harsher than he meant.

 

Donnie doesn’t back down, though, just holds his stare without flinching. “I’m saying you put enough pressure on yourself for at least three people. The rest of us can handle things, too.”

 

Leo bites back the first thing he wants to say and sighs, rubbing his forehead. “You’re all doing enough already. I’m okay, there’s just a lot to keep track of.”

 

“Not _everything_ demands your personal attention, especially in the middle of the night when you’re injured.” Donnie’s voice is starting to rise, though it’s not yet reaching the pitch that signals an imminent Donatello freak-out. “Come on, Leo, you can lean on us a little more.”

 

“I—”

 

“We’ve _got_ you,” Donnie adds quietly.

 

Leo stops himself from saying anything else, feeling guilty. There’s nothing but concern in his brother’s eyes, and he really is tired, and sore. He lets out another sigh. “What is it you want me to do, exactly?”

 

“I want you to go clean up and get some rest,” Donnie says. “I’m staying up for a bit anyway, to keep an eye on Mikey. I’ll check in with Casey and make sure there’s nothing urgent. Routine stuff can wait until morning.”

 

Leo lets out a breath, considering. The thought of his bed is awfully tempting. “If you’re going to be up anyway, check the weather sensors? Kasumi and that artifact need to get out of here.” There aren’t public weather forecasts any more, not since the invasion, but Donnie’s been taking readings from equipment scattered through the city.

 

Donnie nods. “I think we’ve got some clear nights coming up, but I’ll check.”

 

“Okay, thanks.” Donnie offers a pat on the shoulder as Leo heads out. He makes a point of keeping his head up and back straight, in spite of the fatigue. He does not either look half dead.

 

#

 

He runs into Kasumi coming out of the bathroom.

 

Leo almost doesn’t recognize her. Instead of her usual armored bodysuit and hood, she’s wearing a sleeveless shirt and pants: some soft, faded gray fabric that clings to her hips and breasts. He averts his eyes, trying not to stare, and finds his gaze instead drawn to the line of her bare arms as she rubs one of their towels over her dripping black hair—which turns out to be cut plainly, about chin-length. He’s been annoyed every time he looks at her in that deep hood—he can’t make out her eyes properly, can’t gauge the subtler points of her expressions, especially since she’s almost always smiling— but it’s a shock to actually see her looking so ordinary. No hood, no paint or makeup; her face is bare, clean and fresh. Her dark eyes sparkle as she notices him and smiles.

 

“Good evening, or is it morning,” she says, just as he blurts, “I’m surprised you don’t go invisible on your way to and from the bathroom.”

 

Her eyebrows—he can actually see her eyebrows now, smooth dark arches—rise slightly. Leo wants to kick himself for making such a stupid remark. Her smile widens, though, and he can see how the skin at the corners of her eyes crinkle when she does.

 

“Someone told me not to,” she says.

 

“Oh. Right.” Now he feels like an even bigger idiot.

 

“Why?” she says, draping the towel over one shoulder and tipping her chin up. “Should I? Am I unsightly?”

 

“Uh... no, of course not.” Could he just crawl into his shell right now and pretend this conversation never happened?

 

“I’m glad you think so.” She smiles again and then winces, rolling her left shoulder.

 

“Is something wrong?” Leo asks.

 

“Just a sore muscle,” she says, shifting her weight to one hip, the fabric of her shirt shifting against the lines of her body. “I thought a hot shower would take care of it, but not quite.”

 

“Do you need a hand?” he asks before he thinks better of it.

 

She looks up at him and her lips quirk up again. “Well, if you’re offering,” she says, and turns her back.

 

It’s not hard to find the knotted muscle. The spot is tangible through the soft fabric, just to the inside of her shoulder blade. He applies pressure carefully, massaging the whole band of tight muscle, trying not to think too hard about how small she seems, or rather how ridiculously large his hands are on her slim frame. Kasumi makes a little humming noise as he works, and then gasps when he finally presses the knot hard, using his other hand to brace her shoulder from the front. “Oh, that’s it all right,” she says.

 

“This isn’t too much?” he asks, trying to focus on the matter at hand, which is the knot in her back, and definitely not anything else.

 

“No, that’s good, keep going—” The tightness under his fingers finally yields, and she lets out a long sigh of relief. It’s definitely not a groan. Leo lets go immediately and aims to step back out of her personal space, but she turns too quickly and stops him with a hand on his arm.

 

“Thank you,” she says, with just a slight smile, no teeth showing.

 

“You’re welcome,” he manages to say.

 

“Are you all right? I think you took the brunt of our fall. I should thank you for that, actually.”

 

“Oh, I—” There’s a dull ache under his carapace, and he has a lot of sore muscles, but it’s nothing some rest won’t cure. “—I’m all right. Sometimes it’s handy having a shell.”

 

“I can imagine.” She smiles and gives his arm a little squeeze. “Well, if you need anything, let me know. I’d be happy to return the favor sometime.”

 

Her hand feels warm on his skin, and it’s possible that his brain shorts out entirely. “Um... thanks.”

 

Another squeeze and another smile, and she brushes past him on her way back to the guest room. Leo watches the door shut behind her. He half expects Raph to pop out of his own room to glare at him disapprovingly, but no brothers put in an appearance.

 

There was an invitation there, wasn’t there? Probably? Maybe? It’s not that there’s no appeal to the idea, but... if he’s wrong, that would be embarrassing, and if he’s right, then...

 

But now? They’re in the middle of a war, and he’s only known Kasumi for a few days. That’s barely knowing her at all. And he’s tired, and aching, and raw from Karai’s sneers. On top of that, Kasumi’s going to leave, tomorrow, or the next day, and then he’ll likely never see her again...

 

Leo asks himself, for a moment, why that matters. It does, somehow, but he’s much too tired to puzzle it out. He turns to the bathroom instead and contemplates beating his head against the wall. When he emerges from the bathroom, he has no more clarity than he had going in. He hesitates beside the door to the guest room. A little light emerges from beneath the door, signaling that she’s not yet asleep, but...

 

Leo shakes his head and takes himself to his own room, reaching for the stack of paper in an effort to clear his head.

 

#

 

Kasumi lies on her borrowed futon with her legs propped up against the wall, contemplating her acquisitions of the evening. The Prothean beacon is still safely bagged, tucked away in the corner to await their departure. A cavalier way to treat an artifact of incalculable value, but it’s quiet and dark for the moment and safe enough down here. In her hands she holds the books she rescued from the library. There were a lot of tempting titles—a number of what looked to be twentieth-century first editions, for example—but she’d been drawn to a small selection of art books, recognizing the hand-made, hand-drawn work of the twenty-second-century poet Hikari Koizumi. Kasumi turns the pages idly, not really reading so much as admiring the flow of the characters and the interplay of text and sketch. All of Koizumi’s works were limited editions, part of the vogue for artisan-made, individually bound works a century and a half ago. Slow Books, they’d called it. Probably everything from the paper to the binding had been made by the poet herself. Kasumi had always wanted one, and she’d found two in the idiosyncratic library on the estate. She wondered if Leonardo would like one.

 

She keeps an ear tilted toward the door, but can never quite be sure whether she’s hearing footsteps passing in the hallway. _Ninjas_ , she thinks, smiling to herself. She doesn’t hear the shower now, and she’d only heard signs of water running briefly. Chances are he’s passed by instead of coming in. That’s a little disappointing, but after all, it’s late—and they’re both tired, and he’s hurt, so—it isn’t really surprising.

 

She glances at her other acquisition, picked up on a whim, all bright colors in contrast to the restrained black and white of Koizumi’s handmade books. Now that is entirely for him; she hadn’t been able to resist when she spotted it, on her way out of the room. It’s merely a whim, a little thank-you gift, but he’ll probably be very disapproving, and there is something delightful about that thought. Too disapproving to enjoy the poetry, though? Does he even like poetry?

 

He has a basket full of little origami creatures in his room. She thinks she might take a chance on the poetry.

 

Enough time has elapsed that she is fairly sure he won’t be knocking on her door that night. She tucks the books away in her bag and turns out the light.

 

#

 

The next morning, as they’re guzzling down water after training, Donnie tells Leo, “Tonight should be clear. Everything looks good for departure.”

 

“Oh.” Leo recognizes the twinge of disappointment for what it is, but he’s fairly sure he’s able to keep his face neutral and continue without giving himself away. “Good. We need to get that artifact where it can do some good. How’s Mikey this morning?” They’d excused him from training—maybe an unnecessary precaution, but Leo was disinclined to take chances when it came to unknown devices.

 

If Donnie thinks anything is odd about that abrupt change of subject, he doesn’t react to it. “Still a bit of a headache, but he says it’s better. No unusual reactions that I can see. I called Shepard last night, once we hit a reasonable hour for her.”

 

Leo gives him a measuring look. “And how late were you up?” Donnie had seemed all right in practice, but Leo needed to make sure he didn’t run himself down too much.

 

Donnie brushes him off. “It was a quick call. There’s not a lot to be done about exposure to a Prothean beacon, she says, but we should let her know if he’s having any problems. We can probably expect bad dreams for a while.” His turn to give Leo a look. “And how are you doing?”

 

“Fine,” Leo says, truthfully enough. There are a few lingering aches and pains, nothing to take too seriously. He worked out the worst of the stiffness during practice. “Really,” he adds, to Donnie’s skeptical look.

 

“I guess we got away lucky,” Donnie says.

 

“Luck,” Raph scoffs. He sets down his empty glass. “Are we not gonna talk about how Karai’s working for Cerberus now? What the fuck are they up to?”

 

“I told Shepard about it, but she didn’t know why they’d be here,” Donnie says.

 

Leo says slowly, “They’ve been meddling with anti-Reaper operations all over the place. Shepard’s mentioned it before.”

 

“But we haven’t seen ‘em here before,” Raph points out.

 

“No, we haven’t,” Leo says.

 

The three of them exchange glances as the silence grows heavy. Leo’s half glad that April already headed off to the showers. They all have history with Cerberus—the shadowy organization made multiple attempts to capture and study them, as well as other mutants—but none of them have more history than April. It was Cerberus’s project, even before she was born, that gave her her mental powers. The Kraang just took advantage of her abilities afterward. They’ve been fighting running battles against Cerberus for a long time. Cerberus and the Foot together—that’s not good, but he doesn’t know what it means.

 

“We’ll deal with them as we need to,” Leo says finally. “We should just keep our eyes and ears open.” They don’t have the time and resources to run anything exploratory right now, and his brothers’ nods indicate they know that, too.

 

#

 

Somewhat to Leo’s surprise, Kasumi is hanging out with Mikey.

 

He shouldn’t be surprised; everybody likes Mikey. Since he was excused from practice, Mikey’s sprawled in the common room with a video game, while Kasumi’s sitting with a cup of coffee in the cushioned seat behind him, one foot tucked under her, laughing as he crashes his virtual hovercar into obstacles.

 

Mikey looks fine, he notes. They can probably stop going easy on him.

 

“Good morning,” says Kasumi brightly. “How are you today?”

 

“Fine. What about you?”

 

She tips her chin up, pushing her hood back a little. For a moment, her dark eyes are intent. “I wasn’t the one playing body shield.”

 

Leo shrugs, slightly self-conscious under her gaze. “It’s... no trouble.” That sounds weak, even to him. Mikey gives him a look that might be saying _dude, really?_

 

Kasumi smiles, though. “Ah, the heroic type.”

 

His face heats up a little. “Oh. I, um, I don’t know about that—”

 

“Well, I appreciate it,” she says, saving him from a line of thought that was likely to turn even more embarrassing. “I’m okay. I should stretch out a little.” She smiles over the rim of her coffee mug. “Thanks for asking.”

 

Leo offers a tentative smile back. “So... Donnie says the skies look clear for you to depart tonight.”

 

“Ah.” Her smile drops away for a moment. “I suppose that’s not a surprise.” Her mouth turns up again, but her eyes are still serious when she looks up at him. “Thank you for all your help. There was no chance of retrieving this without you. And your hospitality has been delightful.”

 

“It’s... kind of what we do,” Leo says, but his words are drowned out as Mikey drops the controller and exclaims, “Aw, Kasumi, you’re leaving already? You just got here!” He twists around to grab Kasumi’s available leg in an awkward hug, resting his cheek against her knee.

 

Kasumi’s laughing, but Leo grits his teeth, irritated beyond words. He growls, “Mikey—”

 

“I do need to get that device back to the Crucible team,” Kasumi says, still laughing. She manages to extract her leg from Mikey’s grip while patting the top of his head, and shoots a brilliant smile up at Leo that melts most of his annoyance in an instant.

 

“Aww,” Mikey says, pouting.

 

“Obviously we’ll miss you,” Leo says dryly, trying to ignore his brother’s histrionics.

 

“Will you?” She tilts her head. Leo feels, briefly, trapped by her bright gaze, unable to come up with an answer, until she unfolds her legs and slides gracefully to her feet, arching to stretch her back. “I should get some things together,” she says. “And more coffee.”

 

She saunters off to the kitchen, not quite touching him as she goes past. Leo turns from watching her go to find Mikey giving him an oddly inscrutable expression.

 

“What?” Leo says.

Mikey shakes his head. “Dude.”

 

Leo narrows his eyes. Whatever Mikey wants to say, he can just _say_ it, but if it’s about Kasumi, he might as well not. “Since you’re feeling better, you can go out and lend Angel a hand today.”

 

Mikey’s face screws up. Leo knows he’s considering claiming that his head hurts again, or something, but he sighs and gives in. “Fine, bro, I’ll go.”

 

“Great.” Leo turns to go, but not fast enough to miss the next thing Mikey says.

 

“I think she likes you.”

 

Leo sighs, shutting his eyes for a second before glancing back at his brother’s earnest blue eyes. “Does it matter? She’s leaving tonight.”

 

Mikey frowns but doesn’t answer.

 

#

 

By and large, it’s an ordinary day, with ordinary things to do, which means the lot of them are in and out of the lair for errands all day. That’s another change since the Reaper invasion. They never used to spend so much time topside during the day. Of course, it’s not the same any more—the sky is clouded with ash and nobody goes out into the streets just because. It’s safe enough, if they’re careful, which is to say it really isn’t safe at all.

 

But this is what their days have become since the day the war started. Kasumi’s presence is the only thing that makes it different. She’s unobtrusive, asks if there’s anything she can do to help, spends some time lending Donnie a hand in the lab. Leo doesn’t even know what they’re doing, just that they’re both squinting at their omni-tools and scowling. He passes by the dojo once and catches sight of her stretching out, sleek and limber. He spends just a moment watching her move before he pulls himself away. She... fits, somehow, almost as if she belongs there in their midst.

 

She’s a thief, Leo reminds himself, but he can’t seem to summon the suspicion that should belong to her profession. He realizes that somewhere along the way he started trusting her. Some part of him believes that even though she might steal or even deceive, she wouldn’t do it maliciously. It’s stupid, probably—it wouldn’t be the first time he’s trusted where he shouldn’t have, and he keeps track of his mistakes.

 

He can’t seem to help trusting her, though, and he’d like to think he’s a better judge of character now than he was at fifteen. Besides, Shepard trusts her, too, and if Kasumi wanted to do any harm to him or his brothers, she had all the opportunity in the world to do so the night before.

 

He realizes then that she’s thanked him—twice, really—for protecting her from the blast, and he’s never thanked her for pulling their shells out of the fire and retrieving the artifact. It all could have gone a lot more wrong than it did, and the fact that it didn’t owes a lot to Kasumi.

 

So, once he gets back from a scouting run with Raph and Casey, he seeks her out, and finds her at the kitchen table with a cup of tea and a datapad. “Hey,” she says, looking up as soon as she notices him. “How was it?”

 

Leo shrugs. “Not as much Reaper activity as we’d been told. Cleared out a few Dragon’s Teeth, though.” They make a point of taking out the spikes whenever they found them. He clears his throat. “Listen, I never thanked you, about last night.”

 

Kasumi blinks and then smiles, leaning back in her chair. “Oh, no trouble at all. Part of the job.”

 

“Still,” Leo says. “You revealed all those—”

 

“The Alliance troops call them Phantoms.” She wrinkles her nose. “Melodramatic.”

 

He makes a face, but nods and continues. “—and you took them out, too, and if you hadn’t moved against Karai then—” He stops himself, remembering how close it had been.

 

She shrugs, not losing her smile. “Well, if you want to be the best thief in the business, it pays to have good timing.”

 

He lets out a faint chuckle. “I guess it would.”

 

There’s a moment’s pause, and he finds he’s smiling back at her without thinking about it. She says, “Donatello and I talked about the tech I used, so if you ever encounter them again—”

 

“Good,” he says. “That’s good, since you won’t... be here. Not that you couldn’t... I mean, we all worked well together, and obviously Mikey wants you to stay.” _Stop talking_ , he tells himself before he can ramble any further.

 

Her smile twists a bit and her voice grows softer. “Well, I wouldn’t mind. It was fun, and then I could see you in action again.”

 

Leo smiles a little. “We manage to pull it together. You know, every now and then.”

 

She tilts her chin up and he can see her raising her eyebrows. “I don’t doubt it, but I was actually thinking of you. Specifically.”

 

For a moment his breath stops. He has to remind himself to inhale. “Oh.”

 

There’s a hint of challenge in her eyes, or her posture, lazily leaned back with one arm propped on the back of her chair. The only thing running through Leo’s head at that moment is _Damn it, Mikey was right_. And she’s still leaving tonight. He takes another breath, and speaks without quite knowing what he’s about to say: “You—”

 

“Hey, we’re going to need a little time to prep the ship—”

 

Leo pushes the breath out as his brothers tromp into the kitchen, breaking the quiet moment, all of them talking at once. Kasumi sits upright, folding her hands on the table in front of her. Leo turns, crossing his arms, as Donnie finishes, “—and it’s starting to get dark, so—”

 

“Time to get this show on the road,” Raph says.

 

#

 

It’s a clear night as they get to the playground—as clear as nights get any more, at least—and the air is chilly with the promise of winter ahead. Kasumi waits, the Prothean device tucked under one arm, while the turtles and Casey haul her ship out of its shelter and into the clearing.

 

Their walk here was as uneventful as anyone could ask for, and considerably less circuitous than her first trip to the lair, much to Kasumi’s amusement. They have evidently decided to consider her trustworthy. Not even Raphael objected. Then again, they’ve fought together, and that counts for something, especially in times like these. She’s glad nothing happened on the walk, even if it’s anticlimactic, considering she’s still carrying a highly in-demand object and needs to get it safely away.

 

“Stay safe out there,” April says, as the others finish with the ship and come back to join them.

 

“Stay safe down here,” Kasumi replies. “I think you all might have the harder fight.”

 

April shakes her head. “I think there’s enough fight to go around.”

 

“More than enough,” Kasumi agrees.

 

April catches her in a swift hug, and no sooner lets go than Michelangelo follows up with a bone-crushing one. Somewhat to Kasumi’s relief, Donatello and Casey are content with a handshake, and Raphael simply nods. “It was good working with all of you,” she says, and they exchange a round of farewells and well-wishes.

 

Leonardo’s waiting at the ship’s hatch, leaning against the frame. “Donnie took the liberty of opening up and starting your prep sequence,” he says.

 

Kasumi laughs. “He probably just couldn’t resist getting his hands on the ship.”

 

There’s a quick flash of a smile in the darkness. “You’re probably right. And how quickly you’ve grown to know him.”

 

“I’m a pretty good judge of people,” she says. It comes with the territory, when you spend a lot of time watching people.

 

He moves aside so she can board, depositing her duffel and the bag holding the artifact in the little ship’s personal lockers. The soft interior lights are on, as well as the brighter greens and ambers of the controls.

 

“It looks like a nice ship,” Leonardo says.

 

“It’s comfortable enough for one,” Kasumi says with a shrug. “Or two, maybe. Not much more.”

 

“Does it have a name?” he asks, looking around.

 

She makes a face. “It’s officially _Reconnaissance Vessel 1_. I haven’t decided on a better one yet.”

 

He nods. “Be careful out there. The system is supposed to be dangerous.”

 

Kasumi smiles a bright smile she doesn’t entirely feel. “That’s what the stealth drive is for.”

 

He nods again, looking at her much too seriously.

 

“Don’t worry about me,” she adds. “I’ve never been caught yet.”

 

He smiles this time. “I can believe it.”

 

Her own smile turns to a real one. “And if Shepard has any other jobs Earthside, I’ll be the first to volunteer.”

 

Surprise makes him blink for a second and smooths out his brow. It makes him look younger, less tired, and Kasumi can’t resist any longer. She leans in to drop a kiss on his cheek, right at the corner of his mouth. She pulls back and smiles into his startled eyes. “Keep the home fires burning for us.”

 

“We will,” he says, still looking stunned.

 

Behind her, the ship’s VI intones, “Engines prepped and ready. Pre-flight warm-up sequence complete.”

 

His expression shifts into regret, and Kasumi is fairly sure hers does, too. “I think that’s my cue,” she says.

 

Leonardo nods. “Stay safe,” he says, and steps away.

 

“You too,” she says, and the hatch closes between them.

 

#

 

They watch the ship fly away. The vessel rises into the sky and, with its dark paint, quickly becomes hard to see. It shrinks rapidly, only the bright speck of its thrusters visible against the hazy sky, and then it’s gone into the night.

 

Mikey’s the one who starts the walk back to the manhole, the rest of them following along. Leo stands for a moment longer before bringing up the rear. Once they drop into the relative safety of the tunnels, quiet conversation starts. Raph and Casey and Mikey are bickering about something with no heat at all, Donnie and April are off to the side murmuring to each other, with his arm over her shoulders—

 

Leo looks away and tries to tune them all out. He should feel satisfied. Kasumi and her ship are safely away. Mission successful. A contribution to the greater war effort. Job well done. Shepard would be relieved. Everyone else seems happy enough, and he’s—

 

— thinking of the foolish, sentimental gesture he’d left behind in the tiny ship, remembering the brush of her lips against his skin. His face feels hot all over, but that spot seems to burn. He hadn’t told anyone about either the kiss or the gift he’d left—just a couple of tiny things he’d pocketed at home while she grabbed her bag and the artifact. He’d left them on the ship for her to find, an impulse he hadn’t been able to shake. Now he’s not so sure about it. She’s gone now and he likely won’t see her again, and even if he does, she’s an attractive, friendly human, and still a thief, and for all he knows, she flirts with everyone.

 

He knows he’s working himself into a funk, but he doesn’t care enough to try to shake himself out of it. If anyone notices, no one comments on it, or his silence. They’ll get home, he’ll catch a few hours of sleep, and then it’ll be back to the usual grind, planning and patrolling and fighting, and he can work out his bad mood on the husks and marauders. It’s a plan.

 

Once they’re home, Leo brushes past the others with no more than a muttered _good night._ The door of his room closing behind him cuts off the last of Mikey’s chatter, and he starts to unbuckle his gear. Something crackles when he settles on the bed, though, and he reaches under the covers, puzzled.

 

There’s a book tucked under the blankets. A real book, sizable but flat, with a dark leather cover. Leo picks it up, slowly, and opens it. The paper is thick and creamy, soft rather than crisp. Graceful Japanese characters flow across the page. He blinks, the characters resolving themselves into poetry, spare and elegant. Leo sinks onto the bed to flip through the pages: poem after poem, interspersed with pen-and-ink drawings.

 

Kasumi must have left it—on purpose, even—but where— he remembers the library, back at the estate, and screws his eyes shut. This book is stolen property, and must have cost a fortune. Leo opens his eyes and frowns at it. He’s not sure what Kasumi meant by this... gift? But he can’t accept it, can he. Should he... return it, somehow? That seems riskier than it’s worth. His thumb slips on the edges of the pages as he makes to set the book aside, though, riffling through until the book springs open in the middle, where something is stuck between the pages.

 

It’s a comic, colors bright and bold. A _Space Heroes_ comic, to be precise, from the First Contact War-era revival. A totally incongruous thing to be hidden in the middle of this collector’s volume of poetry, and Leo stares at it for almost a minute before he starts laughing, helplessly. How did she know— no, wait, no need to ask that question, she only had to ask Mikey, or any of his brothers, really.

 

There’s a message here that’s a little too cryptic for him to grasp right now, but it’s perfect, somehow, stolen goods or not.

 

He closes the book again, leaving the comic in the center, and lays it down on his nightstand. He’ll figure out what to do with it later.

 

But he’s still smiling, and falls asleep in a better mood than he would have thought possible half an hour earlier.

 

#

 

Kasumi always knew this was the job. Land planetside, retrieve the artifact, take off and deliver the artifact to the Crucible team. She didn’t expected to feel a tug of regret as her ship takes off. She doesn’t always bond with people quickly, but... these people were special. And she’d rather not be on the front lines herself—the Collector mission was close enough—but part of her hates to leave them here, alone and isolated, fighting off the Reapers’ toehold.

 

As her ship rises away from the planet, Kasumi wants to hold her breath. It is impossible to forget the presence of Reapers in the system, and she has an urge to be small and still and quiet, so the Reapers won’t notice her and her precious cargo. It doesn’t work that way, of course. The ship’s doing all the work, and she might as well shout or sing or dance—if she _could_ dance in the tiny space—and it won’t make a difference at all.

 

Instead she only fidgets, restlessly, watching for Reapers in the viewport and sensors, as if her awareness of them would save her from destruction. She drums her fingers on the console, careful not to disturb anything she shouldn’t, until she catches a glimpse of something colorful tucked off on a shelf to her left.

 

She leans forward for a closer look, frowning, and her breath catches. It’s a rose—a paper rose, bright scarlet paper folded into a complex array of petals, almost as lush as the real thing. She picks it up with care, not wanting to crush or bend the paper petals. It’s small enough to fit in her palm, a vivid paper version of her favorite flower. On the shelf behind it is a tiny paper turtle, this one a rich blue. She picks it up, too, and balances the two things together in her hand. There’s no note, no words, but it’s a message all the same, and she can’t help but smile.

 

There’s no point in lying to herself. She likes them all, the entire curious team, but she’ll especially miss Leonardo. She closes her eyes for a moment to recall his startled expression at her impulsive kiss, and opens them again to smile at the rose and turtle in her hand. A token of... something, just like her own gifts. She’ll have no regrets about leaving the poetry, then.

 

Just regrets about leaving.

 

She looks back at the image of Earth, the dwindling planet’s dark side lit by a scattering of glowing fire and not much more, embers in the darkness of space. She sends back a last wish for their safety—and her own—and sets course for the Charon relay.

 

As she goes, it occurs to her that her stealthy little scout ship still needs a name other than _Reconnaissance Vessel 1_.

_Shinobi_ would be perfect.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter beta-read by theherocomplex; the entire fic read in an early draft by probablylostrightnow. Both gave me very helpful comments, and I greatly appreciate their help! I hope you've enjoyed the story!


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